21st - 23rd June 2009 We arrived in Vientiane on a local bus from Vang Vieng. It was our first local bus in a while and made for a very hot and sweaty ride with no air con. Vientiane is the capital of Laos and it'd be fair to say that there's not a whole lot there. We spent our first day riding around on pushbikes trying to arrange our Cambodian visas. On one of our rides we stopped off for some lunch and ended up eating noodle soup with pig's blood. Sammy was...

16th - 20th June 2009 On arrival in Vang Vieng we walked from the highway across an old runway used during the war into a pleasant little town we had high hopes of. The room we found had leaky taps blocked drains and faulty wiring but we liked it none the less. The manager was a strange pommy fellow. He came into our room to fix the power point and I tried to make conversation and said to him 'How long have you been in Vang Vieng?' He looked at me funny and sa...

13th - 15th June 2009 Nikki and I really felt like we had arrived in the middle of nowhere after the long boat trip when a man met us at the shore with a sign with our names on it. The air conditioned van back to the resort could have been a limousine it was such a change. On arrival Nikki's strange mood of excitement made sense as Mum, Dad, Ben and Mojgan were waiting for us at the lovely resort that Mum and Dad had arranged for Nikki and I to stay in for ...

Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 12th June 2009 As we docked at the boat landing in Pakbeng we were greeted by several touts wanting to accommodate everyone coming off the boat. We were approached by a nice lady who took us to a great guesthouse ...

11th June 2009 Our first stop in Laos was the border crossing town of Huay Xai. We got here on a very uncomfortable night minibus from Pai. It was a small place but we thought it would be worth an overnight to experience our first night in Laos and also because we didn't need to be in Luang Prabang until Saturday when Sam's parents had booked us some nice accommodation for his birthday. There wasn't a whole lot to the town but we stayed at a nice guesthouse...