Our last stop in Laos was in Pakse, the nearest town to the Thai border and one of the hottest. We found a cheap hotel and opted for a fan room, we headed up to the roof and found our room was part of a shed, a very hot shed. We met with our friends Clive and Steve that evening and had an Indian meal before heading to bed as we had an early bus to cross the border. We both loved Laos. As soon as we entered in the north the landscape changed, the whole country...

The following morning we were woken up by rain crashing down on the roof of our hut with thunder banging in the background. We were meant to be leaving Tat Lo this morning but we were thinking about putting it off as we had to catch a couple of buses from tiny villages where there's no bus stands, therefore we would be getting very wet waiting for the bus which no one new the times for. We headed back to Moma's for a big pancake. She had buckets everywhere catc...

We took a sweat box bus from the 4000 islands back to Pakse to catch a local bus to Tat Lo. The local bus was entertaining as ever, Kate ended up playing peak a boo for two hours with the girl sitting in front of her. We arrived and walked a couple of kilometres to the small village, by this time it was dark and you have to be very careful choosing a guesthouse in the dark. We found one that had huts out the back, our one was quite nice, it sat on stilts over a p...

So to get down to the south we bit the bullet and booked onto a night bus to Pakse. The bus would take about 12 hours, we were a little worried about how much sleep we would get knowing how bad the roads are here and how fast they drive. Our tuk tuk dropped us off at the bus station and pointed us to our bus. We were a little worried about what bed numbers we would have as everyone else had numbers. The worst beds are the ones at the back as you have to lay with ...

We stopped off at Vientiane, the capital, for one night on our way down to the 4000 islands. Vientiane sits on the border with Thailand, the Mekong separating the two countries and three months before we were sitting on the opposite side in Nong Khai. We settled for the first hotel in our guide book, it wasn't the best but we only needed it for one night. We found a restaurant serving bacon cheeseburgers and couldn't resist. After a good nights sleep we had a d...