We've always relied on fellow travelers to give us some insight on some of our planned destinations but that didn't work for us as we tried to determine the value of visiting Vientiane- we got largely negative or lukewarm reviews which had us thinking about skipping the capital however I didn't think we were finished with Laos so when we found out that the VIP Bus from LP to Vientiane was 'only' 8 hours I was able to get DH on board. I don'...

After a dockside farewell (knowing full well that Luang Prabang is a relatively small town and we would see everyone again wandering the streets at some point), we had to find our hotel with only a map I had sketched from the Internet. The obvious answer was to flag down a tuk-tuk but the dockside tuk-tuk mafia had all conspired to quote ridiculous prices to the newly arrived fresh meat. The Aussie family of 4 piled into one of vehicles only to be driven about 10...

Time for another boat trip. After the floating prison experience in Papua New Guinea, I didn't think I'd get DH back on a boat in Asia but time heals all wounds (or aging clears the memory a little quicker?), and we arranged for a 2 day trip down the mighty Mekong River to the heart of Laos, Luang Prabang (impossible to say three times fast), using a contact given to us by a couple of Canucks we met in our hotel in Bangkok. "Mighty" may soon be an oversta...