On the way to 40 000 Islands, I stopped in the capital city of Vientiane for a few hours. There wasn't much to do here so I just wandered the streets to see a few of the sights. Transit: Yet again, the bus in Laos was interesting and this was the most surprising & uncomforable of all. I had decided to take an overnight bus for this trip to save a bit of time but expected to be in normal seats until I was told by someone else that we would have beds like the ...

Vang Vieng: Getting to this city was a bit of a nightmare as we had to wait 4 hours at the deserted bus station for the bus. They had last-minute just cancelled ours & the next one was then late (on the relaxed Laos schedule). We ended up with a flat tire which delayed us significantly. On arrival, the bus then dropped us off ~4km from the main hotel area at 1AM & all 10 of us had to find our way to accomodations as all the Tuk Tuk's were finished for t...

I made my way across the border to enter Laos & had planned on going straight to Luang Prabang but missed the 2-day slow boat by 30 minutes as the border guards were on one of their regular 'lunch breaks', so I stayed in Huay Xia for one night and took a minibus the next day. There wasn't much to do there but wander around & talk to the few locals that speak english. The kids were adorable and all running up to me wanting to say hello. The travel throu...