7 hours later and THE most horrendous journey on the most rickety old local bus I've ever been on we arrived at the 'bus station' of Vangvieng. We originally weren't going to come here, as a lot of people had slated it and said it wasn't a particularly great place... soon after arriving we had no idea why people had said this. Although not a huge town, the main street was alive and restaurants busy, and there was a really laid back feel to the place, which we lov...

A 10 minute ride in a tuk tuk and we arrived at our next hostel. Once we'd checked in we headed out with the girls to explore the town and grab some food... a buffet of battered bread, pumpkin, aubergene, salad, pasta and rice all heated up in a wok - strange!! We went to the Luang Prabang night market which is lovely and has a lot of handicrafts, but is far too long. We made friends with 2 more English girls, Stef and Emma, and the next day the 6 of us (poor Lei...

A long-tail wooden boat consisting of 2 rows of coach seats, 1 (stinky) European toilet and 80 people to share between.. this was to be our transportation down the long windy Mekong river for 2 days! After 5 hours of numb bums, lots of waves, not much wildlife to look at, and a dozen stops to drop off locals and TV's alongside the river, we arrived in Pak Beng, another tiny little village - a place where you have to keep your wits about you as little kids have th...

A midday checkout from our guesthouse and we got a taxi to the local bus station. This was dodgy to say the least.... We stuck out like a sore thumb, and I soon regretted wearing short shorts with all the Thai men gawping at me!! 3 hours later and we arrived in the tiny little village of Chiang Khong, which is the border town for Laos - it literally consists of 1 street with a few shops, banks, a police station, some food stalls/restaurant and guesthouses on. We...

Up early we checked out of our room and waited for our transport to take us to the bus station. Getting into a 12 seater air conditioned minibus was a luxury compared to what we would soon be on after being dropped off..... but that didn't happen and after half an hour we realized this was actually taking us all the way to Chiang Rai! Sweeeeet. There was another British couple on our bus from Stoke on Trent doing the same journey around Asia as us, so it was nice...