Vientiane Pop 203,000 We travelled to Vientiane in the same mini van but this time every seat was full and we were squashed in with lots of other travelers. Luckily it was not a bad journey and after meandering down through the remaining mountain ranges we opened out onto a Plateau and spent the final three hours speeding through red clay dust roads. These were not the best to travel on and after we hit the roof a few times bouncing in and out of what th...

Vang Vieng Pop 25,000 The next morning we loaded our bags and climbed into the mini bus for our four hour journey to Vang Vieng. We were lucky as we had ten seats for six of us so we spread out and settled down for the drive. It turned out to be one of the worst trips yet as the roads were extremely winding and the driver wasn't great at steering around them or going slow. The saving grace was again the scenery as we weaved down, around and through the m...

Luang Prabang Pop 52,466 As we already knew the drill we found our bags with ease and balancing precariously we walked the plank onto the shore. The riverbank was awash with passengers as three boats had arrived within minutes of each other. This was a blessing as we didn't get harassed at all and were left to get our bearings and have a wander, it was also a curse as we were following a trail of people in search of a guesthouse and every one we seemed to t...

Huay Xai - Pak Beng - Luang Prabang After a short walk we had found a nice guest house in Huay Xai and thanks to a tip off from another traveler we managed to bargain the price down although we were surprised by how much more it was than Thailand. We went out to explore the town and try and get a feel for the place even though we were only staying overnight. The focus was on one fairly quiet main street that ran 1Km from the immigration Jetty to the depart...

Chiang Saen - Chiang Khong - Huay Xai We loaded our ever growing backpacks and managed to carry them whilst pushing the mountain bikes from the previous day the hundred yards to the Coffee Shop where they were to be returned whilst avoiding the bin men and truck and ladies setting up their fruit carts for the day's trade. Mission accomplished we set about the next task of attaining directions to the "bus stop" where we had to get on the sawngthea...