An hour in the air and then we were in Hanoi. Found some relatively cheap accommodation then went to 'Fanny's' icecream shop and had scrummy passion fruit sorbet and watched the thousands of bikes wizz past and occasionaly in to the cafe. Spent the nexy day wondering around the bustling back streets of the Old Quarter and arranging a tour to Halong Bay... Got picked up from our hotel early the next morning and 3 hours later we were in the famous Halong Boy. We b...

The mountainous (and seriously twisty) journey between Vang Vieng and Luang Prabang is meant to be amazing, however with torrential rain and cloud covering most of the hills there was little to be seen. The setting is fantastic with tree covered hills on all sides and the town set within a meander of the Mekong River. First impressions were again how noticeable the french influence has been, from the architecture to the cafe's. Before leaving Laos we thought we...

After our adventure through the cave we caught a bus up to the capital of Laos Vientiane where we spent a couple of days strolling around, drinking delicious coffee in the morning, grazing on pate baguettes for lunch and devouring delicious french cusine at ridiculously cheap prices for dinner.We then took a very local bus, veg under feet, etc.. up to Vang Vieng. VV is a small town crammed with lots of same same bars showing endless re-runs of f.r.i.e.n.d.s and h...

With a fairly tight schedule at the moment we got on our way northwards through Laos, however the local buses stop everywhere and pull in for numerous breaks, it took 9 hours to travel 260km one day! They are however a lot of fun when we don't look at the time too often, the first bus arrived with a motorbike and about 3 tonnes of vegetables on the roof and more fruit and veg stuffed under everyone's seats. There's also the snacks along the way ranging from barbe...

Managed to buy a ticket from our Eco Lodge in Ratanakiri all the way to an island in Laos (one of the 4000 islands)... the journey consisted of 3 buses, 1 bike and a boat and then we were happily dropped off on Don Khon island where we checked in to a river side bungalow. That evening we sampled our first 'Laos beer' and 'Lap Salad'. The salad is minced meat of some kind (we had pork), mint, coriander, lime juice and chilly. Delicious! Oh and of course lots of st...