Four hours later we arrived in Vientiane which was a dusty place, not as colonial as I was led to believe and smaller than I imagined. The minivan coincidentally stopped outside a couple of guesthouses we wanted to look at. Their prices were a big surprise to us. We knew that it's a capital city and our book was a little out of date but the disparity between the prices in print and those quoted was disappointingly large. We tried a few other hostels and the ...

Eventually the roads became less hilly and windy but more dusty and bumpy, we were swerving all over the road (and off it) trying to avoid the millions of potholes. After 6 angst filled hours we arrived at Vang Vieng in once piece! We said goodbye to our fellow survivors and set off to in search of a guest house. We wandered around and checked out a few rooms before settling on a pretty little bungalow for under a fiver - bargain! So we dumped our bags and hea...

Inside the airport building we all went through the usual form-filling rigmarole at Immigration to get our Lao visas. We then got our Lao stamps in our passports and finally we were in! Kirsty then proceeded to sit down and wait for our luggage (thinking it was still being taken off the plane). I, being a little taller, could see it already on the stationary conveyor belt around the corner. So we happily grabbed our bags and went to the ATM to get some Lao Ki...