4000 Islands - Don Det 8am start and a pretty smooth 2hr run to the boat crossing to bring us to Don Det Island. There is nothing to do here but walk/cycle about the island, read a book in your hammock, eat drink and relax and that is exactly what we are doing - kind of - well the blog wouldn't be interesting if Matt and I were always well prepared would it? On the bus to the island Matt read in the lonely planet that there are no ATM's on the islands so come ...

Pakse So after no sleep the night before, we were looking forward to a big comfy bus to sleep in for 6 hours - this DID NOT happen. We bought our VIP tickets from Tha Khet to Pakse but what we got was a rickety old local bus with leather seats complete with holes and no air con. The journey probably should have only taken 4-5 hours but the driver (and his 3 mates) must have stopped on the side of the road every 10mins - literally, no joke! They stopped for a s...

Tha Khaek Well, peace is certainly not what we got once we arrived here - Tha Kheak has a border crossing area into Thailand that was once only by ferry, but now they have built a 'friendship' bridge which makes border crossing much easier! We befriended a German couple (Barbara and Andy) and an American couple (Jordan and Candice) and shared a tuk tuk into the town centre to try find somewhere to off load our bags - easier said than done!! ! We arrived smack ...

Vientiane After a rather bumpy 4hr journey (not 2-3 as quoted - although we were getting used to Laos time!) we arrived at Vientiane . . . . . 2hrs later we'd all booked our transport out the next day! Whether it was a combination of tiredness, love of previous places and the fact we were back in a city I'm not sure, but we wanted out. There does seem to be a few tourist attractions around but in the words of Neesha's friend who visited previously 'we found ...

Vang Vieng 6 hrs later we were dropped in the middle of a dusty road which was apparently the main road of Vang Vieng! Straight in the bag for the Lonely Planet we were soon heading for some river-view Bungalows. We met a friendly Norweigen Guesthouse owner who showed us to some rooms for only £3.33 a night, as we were planning to spend most of the time out and about (tubing and buckets) this was the perfect base - well for us anyway, Betty and Dan moved th...