Laos.

This country is just beautiful.Stunning scenery and gorgeous people.After a bus, boat and long and windy 10 hour bus trip, we finally made it to Luang Prubang.Not keen to do another crazy bus trip like that especially when most of the Asians on the bus were throwing up!!Nice.

Luang Prubang was lovely - a very strong French influence there and just lovely little streets, cafes and bars.We stayed at a place called Oudomphone guest house which we adored.The family that ran the place were so nice to us and went out of their way to make sure we had a good time and were sorted with our plans etc. We just roamed around the town, went to the markets which were really great here as well and again, bought a few bits and pieces to take home with us.We ate lots of good street food although I ordered a sausage and looked inside and nearly threw up, won't do that again (or just won't look!).We found a great bar called Utopia which was directly overlooking the Mekong which had a great view and was really relaxing.We hired a motorbike while we were here and headed out to one of the waterfalls nearby which was just stunning - beautiful aqua coloured water.It was far too cold for me to swim, but Stef jumped in.We would definitely like to come back to LP, there were loads of little places we wanted to check out.....another time!!

Our next stop heading south was Vientienne.This is the capital of Laos and we spent just the one full day here which was enough.Bit of a let down to be honest but we still had a good time here and made the most of it. Had a few massages, went to a few bars, splurged and went to a fancy hotel to use their pool and blew our weeks budget on two cokes.Went out for drinks on the Mekong and best of all ate the street food on the river in the evenings.This food was divine, so tasty and it was a really cool family that ran the one restaurant that we went to each night!!!We checked out the temple and the markets as well but there wasn't really a whole lot going on there.

We made our way down to Pakse after this which is a sleepy old town but quite cute with very, very nice people.We used this as our base to explore the south.We hired a motorbike and went down to Champasak - beautiful scenery and very different to the north.We found a little town where we could get a 'bike boat' across the Mekong which was very interesting!!Got over there and drove a while to the world heritage site listed 'Wat Phu Champasak' which was amazing. It was so old (5th century) and the site had a really eerie feel to it - but a nice 'eerie' feel if that makes sense.Our journey back to Paske was interesting given that it felt like there were gale force winds going on.Took about 88 days to cross the river and then felt like we were being blown all over the road on the way back.Said my prayers to St Christopher and made it back alive and well and had a well deserved drink at the rooftop bar in town.

We went down to Si Phan Don which is the home to the 4,000 islands which is funnily enough 4,000 islands in the middle of an area in the Mekong.We got totally ripped off on this trip and could have done it ourselves but we put it down to a 'lesson' for us.We had a good time though, went to see a beautiful but 'yet another' waterfall and then got a long boat over to Don Khong and hired bikes around the island. Checked out 'another' waterfall and a historic train which we nearly fell over laughing at when we eventually saw it.It was a gorgeous little place though and as always, the locals were lovely and the kids just adorable.It was really nice to just ride around the island (even if Stef did stack it in the mud!).The following day we hired another bike and did the Bolaven Plateau ourselves which was nice and good to charge around the area on our own, sore ass by the end of the day but well worth the ride.We finished the day off with a VERY tasty Indian meal in town.