Onto Vang Vieng and I'm already wishing I'd headed to the relatively untainted north. Vang Vieng is a party town primarily. The number one pastime for the travellers here is 'tubing' which involves sitting in a lorry inner tube, floating down the river from 3km upstream and getting wasted at the purpose-built bars along the way. To me it's just an 18-30s Laos booze cruise and most participants don't show the common courtesy of covering themselves up when they're ...

First of all I must apologise for the long delay on writing this. A few of you have asked me why and the answer is that I'm far too busy most of the time. Busy doing nothing but observing most of the time which for me is what traveling and writing are about so I'm sure you'll forgive me. Internet connections out here don't help much either and I've found that with typing on Off Exploring each character typed takes 3 seconds to appear on the page which doesn't rea...