It’s our last day in Luang Prabang, and unfortunately our last overall in Laos. Over the past three days we’ve wandered around this tiny Asian tourist hub and UNESCO world heritage site, taking in our fill of Buddhist temples, arts & crafts shops and markets. It’s one of those places that exists on it’s own timetable, and as such you can just completely settle in and loose yourself in the detail of your surroundings.

On the surface, Luang Prabang seems like a semi-typical Asian tourist / backpacker magnet, complete with Tuk Tuk drivers a plenty, tat-shops and tour agents oozing… (more)

Tanned and relaxed, we’ve arrived fresh and raring to go at the last port of call on our mini-tour of Laos. Having only a fortnight to visit a country is always going to be a bit of a cram, but what we have seen has whetted our appetite for a future return. In the meantime, we’ve left the best of our Lao trilogy to the last…

We arrived here by air from Champasak (via Pakse) yesterday evening, and after a semi-surreal transfer from the airport in what could only be described as a replica of Hitler’s staff car, we arrived… (more)

You can’t come to this part of the world without experiencing some form of elephant-related activity, and there are many to choose from out of the lodge. Anything ranging from gentle rides in a two-seater “ele-saddle” up to Phu Asa, to full blown day long elephant safaris are available. You can also do a course in learning to ride one, which seemed like a lot of fun. At least it did on paper.

Turns out riding an elephant was a lot more difficult than we both realised. Before you even go anywhere, you’ve got to be able to mount this… (more)

Still in the provence of Champasak, we’ve traveled south-east to Ban Kiet Ngong and the Kingfisher Ecolodge, where we’ll been staying for the next few days. With fauna-rich wildlife on one side and village life on the other, it’s exactly the place to come to purge yourself of those last remnants of Western civilisation… and reduce your carbon footprint simultaneously.

A semi-rustic affair, this place is right smack on the edge of wetland territory and so quiet during the day you can almost hear a pin drop. Thanks in large to music and television being practically banned by the management,… (more)

We’ve spent the last few days on the island of Don Daeng, an island in the Mekong River off the mainland of Champasak. A year ago, if you wanted to stay in this most amazing of places, you would’ve needed to stay in one of the eight villages around the circumference of the island, either as a “home stay” or in what was the only guest house around. We stayed in the recently constructed La Folie, a high class lodge which is so new you can’t even see it fully on Google Earth yet…

Right from the outset, you know… (more)

We spent the best part of the morning on the mainland, at the Angkor-esque temple of Wat Phu Champasak set in the Phu Pasak mountain. Visible from the lodge (and indeed, from our bedroom window), you can almost sense that there’s something special up in them hills.

We left for Champasak after an earlier than usual breakfast; booking a ride across the Mekong with the lodge’s ferry service, it took us no time at all to get to the mainland. We disembarked via an expensive looking cruise boat, which despite being crewed by busy staff seemed to be completely devoid… (more)

We’ve left the capital behind now, and have traveled south to the island of Don Daeng in the Champasak province; we’re booked into the La Folie, a brand spanking new lodge on the banks of the Mekong with a picturesque view across the water towards the Holy Mountain of Phu Pasak. Laos is a landlocked country, but with fishermen working the river, sandy banks and beautiful scenery this place definitely has an untouched coastal nature to it.

It was an excruciatingly early morning as we packed off to the airport. Internal flights don’t run very often in Laos, and there… (more)

We’re returned to Vientiane for our last night in this locale, and back amongst familiar surroundings at the Hotel Beau Rivage Mekong.

True to it’s name, the hotel is set just across a rough dirt road from the Mekong River, almost within swimming distance from the Thai border. Daubed in bright pink and red, with Lao and Soviet-era flags flying above the doorway it stands out amongst the others in particularly garish fashion.

Get past the dubious exterior paintwork though, and inside you’re greeted by smiling friendly staff who always remember who you are, and some of the nicest boutique… (more)

It’s been a fairly easy going couple of days for us, and as we’d settled in nicely we decided to take an excursion out of town; we’ve traveled approximately 30km North by taxi to the near-idillic Rivertime Resort near Thadindeng Village, an eco-lodge where we’ll be staying for the next two days before heading back to the city.

It would be pretty easy to just come here and hang out on the floating riverside restaurant with a couple of frosty-cold drinks; something we were seriously contemplating before deciding to spend the day on more constructive pursuits. We roamed around the… (more)

After an overnight stopover in Bangkok, we’ve arrived at our first port of call on our trip to Laos; the Beau Rivage Mekong hotel in the capital city of Vientiane. As it’s name suggests, it’s situated right on the bank of the Mekong River, and as such our room has a direct south-facing view across the border to Thailand.

We rose early, and made it in plenty of time to Suvarnbhumi (Bangkok) Airport. You would never have believed that only a few days ago the place was full of PAD demonstrators, and had pretty much been brought to a standstill;… (more)