We hadn't planned to go to Thailand, but the beauty of being flexible - that's where we were heading. We had heard about the slow boat from Luang Prabang on the mighty Mekong which takes two days and thought it would be a really great way to travel. We were picked up at 06.30 and taken to our 35-meter long boat to meet our 38 other passengers - except there were only another 4! So, 6 of us enjoyed a 40-seater boat, with its retractable wooden roof giving u...

We left Vang Vieng by mini-van and were obviously the last to be picked up as everyone else was packed in like sardines with 2 seats left on the back row - not the best place for the journey we were about to embark on. 5.5 hours at an average speed of 40km per hour, we jolted our way to Luang Prabang on a "minibus from hell to heaven on earth". Heather didn't spend much time, if any, looking out of the window as we climbed up through the mountains, passing ve...

Another early start and we were at the travel agent's office at 8.30am for a 9.00am departure, only to be told the bus doesn't actually leave until 10.00am. It was a full bus, luckily with air-conditioning and we set off on time for the 4-hour journey to Vang Vieng. The scenery was pretty unremarkable with quite bad roads - one minute a tar road and the next a section of gravel. There was so much dust that houses, cars and the roadside vegetation was brown...

We left the hotel in time for the 9.00am train to Jakarta. Scenery was the usual lovely greenery of the rice fields and little villages until we hit suburbia and the busy outskirts of Jakarta. The train journey was 8 hours but passed quickly. We queued for a Bluebird taxi and slowly went through the city until getting on the motorway to the airport where we had booked in to the Ibis hotel. The next day was another early start with our first flight to Bang...