After the 'experience' of the previous bus journey and the trauma of having to try and console Sara throughout, the prospect of heading South didn't seem that inviting. Therefore rather than endure the reverse bus journey of 18+ hours back to Vientiane, then at least another 14 hours to get to Four Thousand Islands, we decided to break it up with an internal flight and a stop off in central Laos visiting a 'must see' cave. The local flight was only an hour long....

I realise that so many of our blogs involve pretty awful bus journeys but the journey from Nong Khiaw to Luang Nam Tha was the mother of all hellish bus journeys. It actually pains me slightly to relive the journey for the blog but Bryan is refusing to write it in case it emasculates him somewhat. We trusted Mang to sort out our bus journey to Luang Nam Tha. We told him 2 days before where we wanted to go and he assured us he would sort it. He told us the best ...

We booked a bus to Nong Khiaw through our guest house in Luang Prabang. We were picked up by minivan and the driver squished in one more person than there were seats. Not to worry though he assured us the bus station was 5 minutes away. At the bus station we moved to another mini van where fortunately they realised they would need 2 minivans. The journey took around 4 hours so a relatively short journey in comparison to our others. It was boiling hot as no AC (ne...

From Vientiane we took an "eight hour VIP bus" to a town called Luang Prabang in the north of Laos. As you can probably guess it wasn't 8 hours and it wasn't VIP. It took 11 hours in total and the roads in Laos are truly special. They are littered with potholes so the journey was a seriously bumpy one. They give out sick bags at the start of the journey. Fortunately I didn't have to make use of mine, unlike the woman sat behind me. However, I can't really complai...

Hello again...just like London buses you wait for ages for one of my blogs and now you get two at once! It's ok you shouldn't feel privileged I'm just on a long bus journey... As chief transport organiser it made sense in monetary and geographical terms to go to Laos next. So taking advantage of the 0% commission I earn with AirAsia, Vientiane was our next port of call. Arriving at the airport we were aware that we could purchase a visa on arrival, so we though...