We had arranged to race through Laos, spending only a week there and our last port of call was the capital, Vientiane. The city is much more built up than in Luang Prabang and the traffic never seemed to stop but it still has character. Western influences are still strong here, but the big companies aren't, making Laos our first country without a Starbucks, McDonalds or KFC. Also conspicuous by its absence is water. Our hostel contained a sign asking us to use i...

After China, two things hit me hard about Laos. The first is the freedom of religious expression. There are almost no visible places of worship in China outside of Beijing and a few Buddhist monuments in Kunming. In Laos, shrines appear as frequently as they did in Catholic Poland, but these are either to spirits or Buddhist in nature. Second is the lack of infrastructure development. The roads are almost all dirt tracks, with little concrete in sight. There is ...