To the southern most tip of Laos and our golden rules of cycle touring
We have been about a month now in Laos, and have pretty well cycled as far south as you can get. It took us 7 solid days of cycling to get from Tha khet to here: an area known as the 4000 islands, so named because its an area of 4000 islands in the Mekong river, and very pretty it is too. I doubt it's exactly 4000 islands... Maybe about 10 of the 4000 islands. I suspect the definition of "island" might be a bit tenuous. North from Vientiane to Vang Vieng. This place has quite the history: it was easily backpacker central for many years, fuelled by the legendary "tubing"trips that you can take down the Nam Nung river. A truck dumps revellers about 4km upstream of the town complete with lorry inner tube and they float down the river. Enterprising Laos people built bars along the river, and would throw ropes towards the tubers, who would grab the rope and be pulled in to have a beer. The problem was that what was for sale wasn't co...