Vientiane
We arrived in Vientiane a little after 23:00 and as we had heard that you could get a tuk tuk into town for 5000 kip each we shunned all the drivers trying to charge 20,000 each. We tried the classic walk away and wait for them to follow bit they never did. After few km down the road with our heavy packs we flagged down another 5 tuktuk drivers and after a while got one to take us the 8k into town. We arrived a little before midnight after the guest house curfew of 11:30 and promptly went around waking up the guest house staff to discover all the reasonably priced ones were full. Not having much luck traveling with this lot, luckily our luck changed and at one guest house attached to a cafe Karen asked jokingly if we could sleep on the sofa for free, they said yes. In the morning we woke up just before the cafe opened at 6 and ordered breakfast.

We had a couple of nights in Vientiane found a triple room and spent far to much cash on some very good western food.

The Trek
Jasper and Karen were planing on doing a trek and even though it wasn’t something I was that interested in I thought it was something I should give a try while out here. We headed out early to catch a local bus which would take us 2 hours east to a village called …, and on arrival arrange a local guide to take us on a 3 day 2 night trek through the bush with the possibility of seeing wild elephants. The first night we stayed up a watch tower in the bush near an area that the elephants come but no luck. On the seconds day we pushed on to a cave with water fall, we bathed in the water fall and slept in the cave quite a night!

Overall the trek was good but with the humidity and the number of times I walked into spider webs and got attacked by hundreds of ants I think I will stick to the mountains.