After my bus and boat adventure through Laos, I was ready for the jungle, zip-lines (strapping yourself to a wire a sliding along the wire from one point to another), and gibbons (a type of monkey) that the "Gibbon Experience" in northern Laos seemed to promise. The first day was a mix of an extremely long hike down a dirt road to a trail, where the rain began to come down hard and we found ourselves slopping around in the mud and becoming more and more...

Leaving Koh Tao, Ian, Kelly, and I made a short stop again in Bangkok and Pattaya again before heading north to the Laos/Thai border at Nong Khai. Being pressed for time to make it to my microcredit convention in Hanoi, we only spent a couple days in this town searching out some of the famous Buddha parks and strolling through their extensive knick-knack market before crossing the border to Vientiane and looking for the next bus out to Hanoi. I was able to find a...