Today started with a 5 hour bus ride to the Laos capital of Vientiane. We had an afternoon of sightseeing, visiting the Presidential Palace, the Wat Sisaket, which was home to over 10,000 statues of Buddha (as if we hadn't seen enough of those already). We then visited a large structure on the main highway that the French had built as an apology for smashing up the city some when back in time. It was basically a poor man's replica of the Arch de Triumph. So we cl...

This morning started off just as hectic as Hanoi had been to us already. Thinking we had set our alarm for 5am in order to catch our 6am bus, it turned out that we had set it for 6am!! Luckily we awoke at 5:58am & turned into the Usain Bolts of the bag packing world, making it on to our bus for 6:03am. It was a 9 hour drive to the Vietnam/Laos border & our driver, a man that looked like the typical Vietnam criminals portrayed in the A-Team, had little dis...