We finished off our time in Laos with 8 nights in the quiet, lush surroundings of Luang Prabang. It was a low-key period of travel where Clare didn't feel that well for several days (the new malaria pills?), sleep was a bit off (surrounding noise around our place), and we spent a lot of time researching and communicating with international schools and agencies about possible teaching work next year. So perhaps, real life moments! Luckily, between all this down ti...

H'mong New Year, that is! Here in central and northern Laos, the H'mong people are celebrating their New Year. We did not get to see the full celebrations (as we walked and walked but could not find the site), but did have lots of quick interactions with the locals in their traditional clothing excitedly celebrating with their families. This stop on our journey has probably been the most sobering one so far. We first learned about the horrors that this country s...

When you read that Vientiane is a place with not much to do, and easily brushed over, to us this means that it is a place that we will probably feel at home in. We are discovering that we are in a funny traveller category here - too old to be in the noisy backpacker scene, but too young to be in the retired/expat scene. Clearly we relate more to the latter, as we found overselves amongst an older crowd in Vientiane, whose priorities seemed to be leisurely dining ...