This little beauty is my favourite place in the world… That I’ve been. It’s a small island about 45 minutes away from Koh Phi Phi by long tail boat. The beaches are whiter than white and the only things on the island are a ranger hut and a small fishing community. The tourist boats stop coming after 3pm and for a small fee your allowed to camp (twice we camped over and twice we had the whole Island to ourselves). Watch our Travel Video – Bamboo Island Camping.

3 reasons to camp on Bamboo Island:

• It is a paradise Island with nobody else there.
• The coral reef just off shore is some of the best snorkelling I’ve ever done.
• It’s right under the nose of the tourist trail but still most people opt for camping on MaYa Bay (THE Beach from the movie “The Beach”)

2: Motorcycles on Highway 1, Laos.

Again it’s another one that most tourists in Laos will pass along but almost none will stop. For me the part of the road between Vang Vieng and Luang Probang is just breathtaking, I’ve heard it gets better the further north you go but if you rent a motorbike and ride it yourself you will see just what I’m talking about – doing this made me re-evaluate the way I travel and made me wonder what I had missed while on tourist buses thundering through the heart of a place. Watch our Travel Video – The Long Way Laos.

3 reasons to ride Highway 1:

• The scenery is epic and the road passes through some beautiful villages.
• A night in Phou Khoun will open your eyes to what real Laos village is like before the tourists arrive.
• Cresting the mountain and looking down to Luang Probang sat on the mighty Mekong is something you’ll never forget.

3: Thong Reng Beach, Koh Phangan, Thailand.

And finally, yet another place that is within spitting distance of the backpacker trail. It’s so close to Haad Rin you can almost see the lights but that’s what makes it such a quiet place. Just around the headland no more than 10 minutes by long tail boat this small cove has it all – cheap beach huts, great food and the feeling of being deserted on a paradise island. Thong Reng beach is one of the few places that as I’ve arrived I’ve thought
“I could live there forever.” Watch our Travel Video – Koh Phangan.

3 reasons to find your way to Thong Reng:

• It’s too close not to go and Koh Phangan has so much more than just the party.
• It’s home to a beautiful resort called Treehouse, with huts right on the sand.
• When you get there you will want to throw your passport into the sea and never leave.

If you can’t wait until Thursday then here’s a little taster from Vang Vieng in Laos to wet that whistle of yours… Mucho Mucho Love… Come Join In…

Watch more of our Travel Videos.

If you can’t wait until Thursday then here’s a little taster from Vang Vieng in Laos to wet that whistle of yours… Mucho Mucho Love… Come Join In…

Watch more of our Travel Videos.

Here for your enjoyment is our article “The Long Way Laos” in full, as featured in the online travel magazine HipCompass Escapes. It’s about our 550km motorcycle trip from Vang Vieng through one of the most stunning countries I’ve ever seen, to Luang Probang and back again…

Adventure travel has always been one of those things that seems to be on my list of things I said I’d do tomorrow, its not for lack of trying but more a lack of having the balls to ignore the negative practicalities and get on with it, but that’s exactly the attitude you need for it… Less thinking and more doing!

A few months ago while travelling through Laos that was exactly what I did, we were staying in the small and stunning town of Vang Vieng, over shadowed by the towering limestone peaks and blinded by the natural beauty around every corner something in me burst to the surface. Every traveler’s done it – during a long but air-conditioned bus ride to some picture postcard beach, pulled out their adventure travel book from their bag for a spot of inspiration on an otherwise uninspiring journey… Been duly inspired but never taken it further. But this time I was determined to do it, my inspiration came in the form of two monstrous looking dirt bikes, the mental image of the bikes sat inside my head rattling around for a few days as I got down to some serious tubing (if you’ve ever been to Vang Vieng you will know exactly what I mean by that and if not… Go see!) Then out of the blue during a rare moment of sobriety the idea, the adventure was born…
To my left the dirt bikes… To my right cloud-topped limestone peaks leading off northwards over mountains and hills and on to Luang Probang.

A day’s planning had informed me we would be looking at 135 km each way and we had a time frame of two days in which to do it…
Our party consisted of three – myself, my fiancee Georgie and our good friend Toby. Toby owned his own dirt bike back in the UK and was no stranger to off-road biking,  Georgie was a very eager passenger which just left me – with limited motor-biking experience, but what’s an adventure without a challenge? The sun was blazing down on the sleepy streets of Vang Vieng and it seemed to be roasting us alive so we bought a map, saddled up and set off with a roar.

We passed through rice fields and small villages, along winding roads and alongside rivers – all idyllic and stunningly beautiful. We made our way over the hills that surround Vang Vieng and back down the other side, the road was smooth enough and any serious pot holes were scoffed up by our trusty steeds with ease. We found a small cafe down by the river as it meandered between the last of the hills and pulled over for coffee and a refreshing dip – it was stunning! The limestone peaks stretched high into the sky and scratched the bellies of the low lying clouds, completely rural and silent at that moment I realised that was what I left home for. Mixed with the excitement of the journey ahead a sense of sadness washed over me, a sense that all my travels before that had been done the wrong way – if I were on a bus I would’ve breezed past and the river and its beautiful setting would’ve  been nothing more that a fleeting glimpse, all the places I may have missed started racing through my head and all I could do was hope that this time I would make up for it.

The journey wound up mountains and back down again, we stayed a night in a tiny town called Phou Khoun far away from anywhere. We woke at 5 am and drove through clouds and we stopped at countless villages along the way. I could write about the hard bits, about the miles, the hills and sore bums but it doesn’t really seem fair. Not when we passed so many warm and friendly people who desperately wanted to go out of their way to make us feel welcome, who call that terrain home and who’s everyday lives make our adventure seem like a walk in the park. The hardships that made it an “adventure” were also the things that pushed us on when we were exhausted. The funny thing is Vang Vieng to Luang Probang is a road well travelled, except mostly on a bus behind glass, reading books as they go – but we really “traveled” it, we felt every mile and every bump and the people we met and the places we stopped at would’ve been missed if we’d taken the bus. A motorbike has the power to connect you to your environment and you have to work with the road not in spite of it… Laos is the most charming country we’ve ever been to, the people and landscape are truly beautiful and those few days were some of the most interesting, fun, hard and rewarding of our whole travels. What it taught me was – the only thing that ever stands between a person and an adventure is the person themselves.

Below is a full length video of the trip so you can pretend you were right there with us, Mucho Mucho Love… Come Join In.

Watch more of our Travel Videos.

Here for your enjoyment is our article “The Long Way Laos” in full, as featured in the online travel magazine HipCompass Escapes. It’s about our 550km motorcycle trip from Vang Vieng through one of the most stunning countries I’ve ever seen, to Luang Probang and back again…

Adventure travel has always been one of those things that seems to be on my list of things I said I’d do tomorrow, its not for lack of trying but more a lack of having the balls to ignore the negative practicalities and get on with it, but that’s exactly the attitude you need for it… Less thinking and more doing!

A few months ago while travelling through Laos that was exactly what I did, we were staying in the small and stunning town of Vang Vieng, over shadowed by the towering limestone peaks and blinded by the natural beauty around every corner something in me burst to the surface. Every traveler’s done it – during a long but air-conditioned bus ride to some picture postcard beach, pulled out their adventure travel book from their bag for a spot of inspiration on an otherwise uninspiring journey… Been duly inspired but never taken it further. But this time I was determined to do it, my inspiration came in the form of two monstrous looking dirt bikes, the mental image of the bikes sat inside my head rattling around for a few days as I got down to some serious tubing (if you’ve ever been to Vang Vieng you will know exactly what I mean by that and if not… Go see!) Then out of the blue during a rare moment of sobriety the idea, the adventure was born…
To my left the dirt bikes… To my right cloud-topped limestone peaks leading off northwards over mountains and hills and on to Luang Probang.

A day’s planning had informed me we would be looking at 135 km each way and we had a time frame of two days in which to do it…
Our party consisted of three – myself, my fiancee Georgie and our good friend Toby. Toby owned his own dirt bike back in the UK and was no stranger to off-road biking,  Georgie was a very eager passenger which just left me – with limited motor-biking experience, but what’s an adventure without a challenge? The sun was blazing down on the sleepy streets of Vang Vieng and it seemed to be roasting us alive so we bought a map, saddled up and set off with a roar.

We passed through rice fields and small villages, along winding roads and alongside rivers – all idyllic and stunningly beautiful. We made our way over the hills that surround Vang Vieng and back down the other side, the road was smooth enough and any serious pot holes were scoffed up by our trusty steeds with ease. We found a small cafe down by the river as it meandered between the last of the hills and pulled over for coffee and a refreshing dip – it was stunning! The limestone peaks stretched high into the sky and scratched the bellies of the low lying clouds, completely rural and silent at that moment I realised that was what I left home for. Mixed with the excitement of the journey ahead a sense of sadness washed over me, a sense that all my travels before that had been done the wrong way – if I were on a bus I would’ve breezed past and the river and its beautiful setting would’ve  been nothing more that a fleeting glimpse, all the places I may have missed started racing through my head and all I could do was hope that this time I would make up for it.

The journey wound up mountains and back down again, we stayed a night in a tiny town called Phou Khoun far away from anywhere. We woke at 5 am and drove through clouds and we stopped at countless villages along the way. I could write about the hard bits, about the miles, the hills and sore bums but it doesn’t really seem fair. Not when we passed so many warm and friendly people who desperately wanted to go out of their way to make us feel welcome, who call that terrain home and who’s everyday lives make our adventure seem like a walk in the park. The hardships that made it an “adventure” were also the things that pushed us on when we were exhausted. The funny thing is Vang Vieng to Luang Probang is a road well travelled, except mostly on a bus behind glass, reading books as they go – but we really “traveled” it, we felt every mile and every bump and the people we met and the places we stopped at would’ve been missed if we’d taken the bus. A motorbike has the power to connect you to your environment and you have to work with the road not in spite of it… Laos is the most charming country we’ve ever been to, the people and landscape are truly beautiful and those few days were some of the most interesting, fun, hard and rewarding of our whole travels. What it taught me was – the only thing that ever stands between a person and an adventure is the person themselves.

Below is a full length video of the trip so you can pretend you were right there with us, Mucho Mucho Love… Come Join In.

Watch more of our Travel Videos.

Hot off the presses is the new HipCompass Escapes fall edition with our featured article about Adventure travel in Laos… Get it while it’s hot, heres a taster to wet your whistles:

“We passed through rice fields and small villages, along winding roads and alongside rivers – all idyllic and stunningly beautiful. We made our way over the hills that surround Vang Vieng and back down the other side, the road was smooth enough and any serious pot holes were scoffed up by our trusty steeds with ease. We found a small cafe down by the river as it meandered between the last of the hills and pulled over for coffee and a refreshing dip – it was stunning! The limestone peaks stretched high into the sky and scratched the bellies of the low lying clouds, completely rural and silent at that moment I realised that was what I left home for. Mixed with the excitement of the journey ahead a sense of sadness washed over me, a sense that all my travels before that had been done the wrong way – if I were on a bus I would’ve breezed past and the river and its beautiful setting would’ve  been nothing more that a fleeting glimpse, all the places I may have missed started racing through my head and all I could do was hope that this time I would make up for it.”

Enjoy.

Hot off the presses is the new HipCompass Escapes fall edition with our featured article about Adventure travel in Laos… Get it while it’s hot, heres a taster to wet your whistles:

“We passed through rice fields and small villages, along winding roads and alongside rivers – all idyllic and stunningly beautiful. We made our way over the hills that surround Vang Vieng and back down the other side, the road was smooth enough and any serious pot holes were scoffed up by our trusty steeds with ease. We found a small cafe down by the river as it meandered between the last of the hills and pulled over for coffee and a refreshing dip – it was stunning! The limestone peaks stretched high into the sky and scratched the bellies of the low lying clouds, completely rural and silent at that moment I realised that was what I left home for. Mixed with the excitement of the journey ahead a sense of sadness washed over me, a sense that all my travels before that had been done the wrong way – if I were on a bus I would’ve breezed past and the river and its beautiful setting would’ve  been nothing more that a fleeting glimpse, all the places I may have missed started racing through my head and all I could do was hope that this time I would make up for it.”

Enjoy.

Widescreen (1920 x 1200) | Standard (1280 x 1024)

]]> http://happytimeblog.co.uk/desktop-wallpaper/august-desktop-wallpaper-now-yours/feed/ 4 http://happytimeblog.co.uk/laos/vientiane/270609-bed-bus-to-sardine-bus-vang-vieng-vientiene-pakse-and-then-cambodia/ http://happytimeblog.co.uk/laos/vientiane/270609-bed-bus-to-sardine-bus-vang-vieng-vientiene-pakse-and-then-cambodia/#comments Sun, 28 Jun 2009 14:56:33 +0000 Aaron Bradford | HappytimeBlog.co.uk http://happytimeblog.co.uk/2009/06/28/270609-bed-bus-to-sardine-bus-vang-vieng-vientiene-pakse-and-then-cambodia/

With a couple of full days resting and recuperation behind us we decided it was time to move on from Vang Vieng. We wanted to get down to the south of Laos and then press on to Cambodia again, the plan was to kayak to Laos sleepy capital Vientiene and then sort the rest out from there so that’s just what we did… Beats a bus ride any day!

To be honest the actual amount of kayaking was minimal and the rest of the journey was done in a minivan but we had fun bobbing down river, over some easy rapids and a BBQ on the riverside. We arrived down in capital city in the early afternoon and bumped straight into some people we had been tubing with, I think we were all still feeling the bike trip because none of us could really be arsed to do any thing so we got a couple of beers and watched a movie in our room. We stayed in Vientiene for only one night, long enough to get plenty of Dollars changed up for any border shenanigans and a good massage. As we were checking out of our room Georgie had a shower and somehow managed to break the door lock, trapping herself in the bathroom – Toby and I tried to open it but to no avail so we had to call for some staff, two fellas went at the door with a screwdriver and hammer while Toby and I sat and watched and I think they thought it was their lucky day when a half naked Georgie emerged a good twenty minutes later…

We had a bed bus booked to take us all the way to the south of Laos to a town called Pakse, thirteen hours but with fully flat beds – Georgie was literally thrilled by the idea and for once couldn’t wait to get on the bus.

Once again we bumped into a fellow tuber and apart from the bus staff trying to get Toby to spoon up and share a bed with a strange man (hilarious!) it went off without a hitch… Almost half of the entire country just passed by as we slept and we hardly noticed… A stark contrast to the journey we had been on just a few days earlier.

From Pakse to four thousand Islands was a short minibus and boat ride, apparently there are about four thousand Islands in that stretch of the Mekong, ranging in size and all dotted at the far south of Laos pressed against the Cambodian border. A very quiet and rural place dotted with a few simple bars and bungalows we planned to stay a couple of nights but after a short spot of exploration on a bicycle we turned up nothing… Despite it’s nice quiet, rural charm it was pretty boring so we decided to move on the next day. But not before we sampled the night-life!

We met up with our tubing friend Emma and all went down to the hottest spot on the Island – the Reggae Bar, got some buckets and played some cards in the vain hope we warmed up our gamble muscles ready for the Cambodia casinos. We ended up having probably more than our fair share of Laos whiskey and on our way home in mid conversation Emma managed to stagger clean off the side of a small bridge and disappeared into a ditch, a guy happened to be walking past with a head-torch (the generators and  lights go off at around 10pm) and shed some light on Emma so we could pull her out and hit the hay.

7am alarm… Regret whiskey buckets, claw our shit together and stomp down to the boat. We wound in some strong coffees then hit the water. We had a nice minivan ride down to the Laos – Cambodia border and the formalities went pretty well, they tried to screw us out of a few Dollars each but I got tipped off by an honest official and we soon sorted that out… That’s where the fun started, two mini buses were sat waiting and one was already half full of people, nobody seemed to know what time they were leaving or even which one we were supposed to go in. The people already there had been there for two hours already and were getting a little irate but we knew better and just sat in some shade until decisions were made. At first they attempted to put an extra seven people into an already over full bus but we made a stand and got Emma and Georgie to charm them into using both buses. A little hot and sweaty we were finally on the road and only two hours of waiting for what seemed like nothing.

That first leg was about three hours, to a town called Kratie. Our bus was full of a good bunch of people who were all up for a laugh so the time passed quickly but from Kratie to Phnom Penh was a different story… Six hours crammed into the bus with our bags inside too, and nobody actually had a whole seat to themselves – in a word… Gruelling. I couldn’t help but wish we just had our own motorbike… But we didn’t and don’t my arse know it!!!

By the time we got to Phnom Penh all the people in the bus were intimate friends so we dragged them along to our favourite place to stay – The Okay guest house and then on to the nearby casino… A few of them had never been into a casino before or played roulette but the free beer flowed and in no time everyone was having a ball. Maybe because there was a big group of us guzzling beer like it was going out of fashion or maybe because we were all up but they stopped serving us beer, I called the floor manager over and politely said no beer – no play, he didn’t seem to particularly care so we cashed up and found a Cambodian night club along the river front to go and drink away our winnings… All $5 of them.

Seeing as we had to have our beautiful bikes back by 9am or pay for a whole extra day – and we still had about 90km to go it was an early start… 5:30am early to be exact! I didn’t manage a descent nights sleep and after I had woken the other it seemed like they hadn’t either, don’t know why though because although our rooms were “simple” the were very comfortable, maybe we were just over tired. As I staggered out of our room, down the hall to to the toilet I caught a peek of the sunrise out of a small grubby window and it was breathtaking – the hills rolled up and down all the way to the horizon and a heavy mist hung low, the sun coming up had turned the sky bright pink and the mist was just as brightly tainted by the beautiful morning sun.

We got ourselves together and got downstairs to our bikes, the lady who ran the guest house was up and making the first fire of the day to boil the kettle and get breakfast for all the truckers who had stopped over the night. We tried to get ourselves some hot coffee but the water was taking forever and as we all know a watched pot never boils. I rolled the bikes out into the street and checked my oil which was getting pretty low again and Georgie sorted some coffee (we were going nowhere until after some coffee). As soon as everyone and the bikes were topped up respectively we set off into the morning mist.

As we passed through town and along the winding roads they were all buzzing with activity as people went about their business before the sun got too hot. As usual the people we passed waved and smiled, so friendly and so welcoming. The roads were just as fun to drive as the day before and with the cool morning air our bike was running like a dream… Accelerate – change up – ease off – brake – change down – and accelerate… That was how it went for the next 15 km and as we swept around one bend that was completely whited out on one side it became clear that it wasn’t in fact morning mist but low lying clouds and they swept right across the road revealing sneaks of blue sky.

We pulled over again at the amazing viewpoint rest stop that we stopped at on the way up but this time there was no view, it was just white everywhere, even inside the building because they aren’t finished building it yet and where there’s no glass the clouds blew threw as we finally knocked up some hot coffee’s.

Still looking at a good 70km to go we didn’t hang around, coffee down we carried on our way through the clouds. The roads were still lined with friendly people making there way to wherever it was they were going and as we slowly dropped down the hill we started to drop below the cloud and the landscape once again opened right up.

Sadly the ride back only seemed to take half as long and by 8 am we were out of the hills and down onto the flat straight roads again, we opened up the bikes and made some serious headway. We passed a couple of places where we stopped on the way through and they all waved and shouted of course but we didn’t stop again until we got to the little coffee shack on the river, there was a spit of rain in the air but now we were down from the hills things had warmed right up. We stripped off the extra layers had a smoke or two then made the final push back into Vang Vieng, Georgie was loving it from the second we got up but now she was desperate for a wee so we had to burn some rubber and get through the last 15km in record time. We rolled into Vang Vieng at 8:50 and pulled up at our guest house where our bags were stowed in blazing sunshine. We unloaded all our crap and Georgie’s comfort modifications while she tented to her urgent loo call and then we had to return the bikes… Needless to say I really didn’t want to, it was my first real bike and my first real bike ride and what a ride it had been, hard at times and we were all exhausted but I’m hooked… The funny thing is Vang Vieng to Luang Probang is a road that just about every Laos tourist travels at some point except they’re on a bus, behind glass, reading books but we actually travelled it, we felt every mile and we felt every bump. The people we met and the places we stopped would never have been possible if we were on the bus and there is something about a bike that makes you feel connected to the environment and you have to work with the road not in spite of it… Laos is by far the most charming country we have been to, the people are so warm and welcoming and those few days have been some of the most interesting, fun, hard and enjoyable of my whole time away.