By David SmeeAwake. My eyes flickered around searching and studying the detail of the room despite the darkness. My ears strained to hear, while my mind sifted through each scratch, shuffle and distant voice. Why was I suddenly awake? My whole body was on full alert as I looked for an answer. Then slowly. In bits. Memories returned. Images of a river; I flowed along it entering a massive cave, only to be spat out again into light... and a village. There were tw...

Definition: the Capital of Laos. Review: as exciting and attractive to visit as, well, Bracknell. Actually... I think that is doing Bracknell a disservice. Top tip: don't bother.

Vang Vien. Former tourist trap, with one main draw: tubing down the river while completing its pub crawl of 30 plus bars. Now only five bars -- due to the Aussies all getting too excited and all killing selves -- the town is struggling to reinvent itself to make more use of its picturesque setting and appeal to a higher class of tourist. Its all a little bit confused at moment, to be honest. But still, it's a bit of a laugh if you're up for a ride along t...

Our second boat journey was even more eventful than the first. Two hours in the boat broke down. Another two/three hours later, David and I were still sitting on the little beach we'd been stranded on, rather indifferent to the whole thing -- well, we'd just assumed it would eventually get fixed...that's just how things work in out-of-the-way countries like this --  while our fellow travelers (quite clearly, Tourists) had become rather more anxious ...

Ok, so the boat journey wasn't quite what we were expecting. Apart from waking up with a temperature of 101.3 degrees and having to brave travelling none-the-less, so as to not miss the opportunity to sail*, the "slow boat" was remarkably fast and considerably smaller that the canal-like barges we were expecting. In actual fact, we were crammed onto two low benches running the length of the narrow boat; and for the next four hours interchanged between a state...