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...

Our train journey this morning took us from Surabaya to Yogyakarta, a 4.5-hour journey, where we had decided to stay for 3 nights at the Phoenix Hotel. The hotel was beautiful, built in 1918 and like a colonial mansion in the heart of the city, again we were benefitting from out of season rates. Once we had settled in, we decided that we would actually extend our stay to a week and in between seeing the "must sees", spend some time relaxing and planning for t...

After our exciting early morning adventure to Mt Bromo we were on the road again and another train to the city of Surabaya, Java's 2nd largest city. After 2.5 hour train journey we picked up a Bluebird Taxi (recommended as they have meters) and our strange taxi driver. The back seat pockets were filled with sweets, hand sanitiser and various other unrecognisable bits. "Help yourself" he said, "terima Kasih" we replied but decided against it. As he was drivi...