From Vientiane we flew to Hanoi, Vietnam, which took about 55 minutes. Hanoi is so loud compared to Laos and everybody seems to shout at each other whereas in Laos everyone was peaceful and quiet. We arrived late afternoon to the hotel so by the time we had dropped our bags off it was dark. The traffic is awful with a bike coming at you in every direction and beeping its horn at you. We had an early night as the next day we were driving to Halong Bay, which woul...

Arrived in Vang Vieng the other day which is full of young westerners getting smashed so we enjoyed it. Its really cheap here. Me and Rikki had 2 beers and 2 main meals and it was about 4 quid! Or 50,000 Kip! We payed 10 pound each to do an adventure tour which included tubing, trekking and kayaking. It also included lunch. Tubing is were you are sat in a rubber ring and float down the river stopping at riverside bars on the way! We did the tubing through a cave ...

Luang Prabang is awesome! In fact Laos is in my top 5 countries I have visited. Yesterday we visited caves and waterfalls which were spectacular and also a museum which was pants. We had a free day today so we went on an elephant trek, fed the elephants and went for a swim under a waterfall. The swim helped as it reached nearly 40 degrees. The room however is 1000 degrees and the fan seems to generate more warm air! Tomorrow we head for Vang Vieng which will ...

Yesterday we arrived at the Thai/Laos border, and stayed overnight on the Laos border side. We took a private boat journey to Pak Beng which is a small port 7 hours into Laos along the Mekong River. It pissed it down the whole way there and all night! We went to the only bar in the town called Hive Bar, where they had tasty cocktails. They had one called p**** Food. I stuck to beer and home made whisky. Fair to say we all got pretty drunk despite the bar closing ...

Arrived into Chiang Mai around 8am this morning on the sleeper train which was awesome! Rikki didnt agree as I got the bigger bunk! The train was better than any in England, it was also on time. However it did take 14 hours! We had breakfast on the way to the hotel before dropping our bags off and going immediately to a Thai cooking class. Before starting the class we had a trip to the local market to pick up our ingredients!! We cooked 4 dishes each which inclu...