Hello, sorry for the radio silence, we’ve been running around like headless chickens recently, mainly on horrible buses, for which I blame the French, who couldn’t be bothered to build any railway lines here.
We had the journey from hell back from Northern Laos. Even though we took the VIP bus from Sam Neua to Vientiane [...]

North eastern Laos is rugged, mountainous, remote and a bit tricky to navigate – until a few years ago, parts of it had no proper road links with the rest of the country and a couple of provinces were still not entirely safe due to anti-governement insurgency by Hmong guerillas. Also, it’s littered with unexploded [...]

We’ve just finished a 23 hour bus ride from hell.  I tried to distract myself from deadly boredom by calculating some trip facts, and here they are:

We’re on day 114
We’ve visited 6 countries so far
We’ve covered 5,865 miles by air
We’ve covered 8,514 miles by bus, train and boat
We’ve covered 456 miles by foot (thanks Voda [...]

Our next stop in Laos is Nong Khiaw, a small rural town set on the banks of the Nam Ou river, nestled amongst jungle covered limestone mountains. Our bamboo bungalow faces west offering amazing views of Nong Khiaw’s spectacular sunsets. It’s the end of the dry season here so it’s hot and the [...]

We’ve just come back from a day-long cooking course which was definitely a trip highlight, although I’m almost hallucinating through excessive chilli and garlic intake and I weigh about three stones more than I did this morning.

Another day, another bad-tempered border guard, another medical disclaimer signed to assure the authorities we don’t have swine flu. I’m so bored of this global health paranoia that I thought about following James’ advice and writing ‘Mexican pig farmer’ under the occupation section of my Laos visa form, just for shits and giggles. But I [...]