Along the roads of Laos

We are currently in Vietnam. Before coming here we were in Laos for about 11 days.  This was much longer than we planed on staying in Laos but since I got ill for 6 days we hung around Luang Prabang and then Vientiane, the capital. Sadly, besides the waterfall, in Luang Prabang and Vientiane we only saw what went by while we drove in our tuk tuk from the bus station to our hotel and the shops on the hotel street. I was bed ridden. My symptoms included chills, slight fever, aching body, horrible constant headache, jaw pain, ear pain, eye pain, soar throat, occasional nausea and eventually diarrhea. Now eight days after first getting sick I am 98% cured. I finally feel like I have the energy to put up a blog post and to see more than one street of the city we are visiting. During our long, long, long bus rides in Laos…Continue Reading

The Great Pho-Tasting Expedition of 2010

Hey guys, Laura and I are finally in Vietnam. As many of you already know, she started showing some symptoms of dengue fever when we were in Luang Prabang, Laos. Our original plan was to take a bus from there to Hanoi, in the north of Vietnam, but Dengue is not something you want to mess around with, and since Luang Prabang (and most of Laos) has virtually zero modern healthcare, we decided to head to the capital Vientiane instead. Luckily, by the time we got there, Laura’s fever had passed and her other symptoms calmed down. Facing another epic (24-30 hour) bus ride to get from Vientiane to Vietnam, we caved and bought some plane tickets via the north of Thailand to Ho Chi Minh City instead (via Bangkok). We are rapidly running out of time on this little journey of ours, and the consequence is that we will…Continue Reading