Vang Vieng made a welcome change from the quiet streets of Vientiane. There's plenty going on and loads of things to do here, the laid back atmosphere creates a near horizontal way of life. I suppose that's one reason why so many tourists visit here, another is the tubing- floating down the Nam Song River on used lorry inner tubes and getting pulled in to bars, along the way, by ropes thrown by locals. Because of the 20+ backpackers dying in 2011, mostly from rop...

It's a new country, a new language and a new currency. Other than that, not a great deal has changed. Just like Vietnam, it's still communist, there's always something on fire and without fail, there's always a chicken knocking about. The bus ride was never ending, in total, it took us over 27 hours to get here. For 24 of those, it was raining and it didn't take long for the bus to start leaking; just when we thought things couldn't get any worse. But this is As...

Roughly 20km outside of Halong, the heavens opened and I got caught in the mother of all downpours. The rain lasted for near enough the whole journey and I arrived Hanoi looking and feeling like a bit of a drowned rat. Although everything was soaked right through, spirits weren't dampened and it was a great, albeit slightly emotional, final journey. Just as the case has been for the last four weeks, the bike kept on going, despite Mother Nature throwing everythin...

It would have been rude not to have met up with some of the friends I had met in Cambodia and we celebrated my last night in Sa Pa. I left in the morning late and a little hungover. It was a two day ride of just over 500km. That morning, I had planned to travel along the Chinese border and then the following day, drop down onto the coastline of Halong Bay. It hasn't been the most exciting of days, not helped by the unimpressive and decidedly grey-looking Chinese ...

Raf and I arrived in Sa Pa quite late, having stopped on the way at a waterfall that was just outside of the town. We acted as interested and as enthusiastically as we possibly could after a three long days of riding. The waterfall was nice and I'm glad we went to see it but all I really wanted (and needed) was a hostel with shower. I met up with George who was a 2 day veteran of Sa Pa. I met him at the hostel that he had been staying at, checked in and had, what...