Houay Xai Vacations, Houay Xai Vacation Reviews, Tourism Guide

What does it take to get from northern Thailand to Laos? Answer: three Chiangs. Unfortunately Chiang Mai, Chiang Rai and Chiang Khong are all uneventful and same-same. Much more interesting are the three other backpackers with me on the bus: Henrietta from Englan and mates Zohar and Niv from Israel (Niv? An omen?? See the Yangshuo blog). On hearing I'm from Amsterdam Niv veers up and claims to be the biggest Ajax fan in Israel, if not the biggest outside of Holland. An omen indeed! This ...

The Gibbon Experience is held in the Bokeo Nature Reserve and is an attempt to conserve the area from poaching, logging and slash-and-burn farming. The Gibbon Experience, as travellers know it, however, is a three-day stay in treehouses within the reserve with full access to some extreme zip-wires that would never be allowed in most Western countries. Its popularity has increased greatly recently; without being included in guidebooks, relying mostly on word-of-mouth, it is now booked up weeks...

KERRY - So we had signed up to the Gibbon Experience in the wet season! A 3 day Trek into the Bokeo National Park. They do warn you what will be involved in the 3 days and that you do need to trek for 6 hrs to get there and 8 hrs to get back, and you do listen to this and take it on board and then completely disregard it and think it can not be that bad! Or that is what happened to us! i must just say at this point if Andrei was writing this then he may not be as negative about the experience...

Up early this morning and into a tuk tuk to the bus station.  Chiang Mai rush hour was wonderful - darting into back alleys, causing traffic jams, but nobody got stressed, just smiled at each other. It took us 6 hours to get to Chiang Khong where we got someone to arrange our visa whilst we had some food and got some money for Laos.  Then it was onto a boat for a two minute journey across the Mekong River and into Laos.  Because it was after 4pm, the immigration of...