To arrive in Vientiane, after the hustle and bustle of Hanoi, was truly to note a huge difference in culture. That, and the massive wad of local currency I was handed in exchange for sixty quid in sterling. I mean, we're talking the biggest note was worth 25p! Weighed down thus, we emerged from arrivals and took a ride in a dilapidated '70s era Toyota taxi into town.

Where Vietnam has traffic chaos, Lao has a Zen calm on the roads. Where there are vehicles, they pass each other sedately. In one day of walking around I heard exactly two (mercifully gentle) uses of the car horn. This compares with an average of 10 blood-curdling blasts a minute in Vietnam.

Vientiane is simply too backwaterish to be a capital city! It has a relaxed, slothlike charm all its own. Every third building is a temple, and the warm sunlight pumping down on the city seems to act like amber, slowing people down and giving even the dusty, broken-down back streets a soft glow.

The food in Lao was always a treat, from "scrappy noodles" (a sort of chow mein) to laap (crushed salad). The pace of life was delicious too. And, unlike many of the western tourists we saw, I certainly didn't need to smoke any spliffs to feel chilled out here.

After a few days in Vientiane we got the bus to Vang Vieng, a delightful small town a few hours north. It has developed from being a staging post on the route to Luang Prabang into attracting travellers in its own right. Although there's not too much to do there (there are several interesting caves nearby and the opportunity for some messing about in boats), again it's just a great place to relax. The more adventurous people walk about a bit; others just sit in one of dozens of restaurant/bars and watch videos.

After a couple of days of recharging our batteries, we took a bus heading north. The journey took in some spectacular natural scenery, ranging from vertiginous valleys through lush forested hills to grassy plains. Our destination was Luang Prabang, Lao's second city.

This city, a UNESCO World Heritage Site owing to the fact that you can't take two steps without tripping over a temple, seems more like a capital than Vientiane. Clearly, there is some major investment going on here in the tourism trade. Where Vientiane's main thoroughfares were lucky to have seen tarmac in the last decade, even the little back alleys of Luang Prabang are paved with charming brick patterns. But the general Lao rule of laid-back living holds here as well.

We met some interesting people here: Augustinus, an Indonesian studying in Beijing, showed us the pleasures of taking photos of random people; Ron, a Canadian teaching English in Korea, was also a bit of a snapper with his digital SLR; Litter, a local man just out of his priest's robes after five years, was a really lovely guy. It is he who invited us to a real Lao wedding in a village about 45 minutes out of town:

Augustinus, Frankie & I went with him in a tuk-tuk to the village and were then treated almost as guests of honour at the wedding of Litter's cousin. We watched the Buddhist ceremony with interest, Augustinus taking literally hundreds of pictures much to the delight of everyone there. We were befriended by the assembled village elders and honoured with white cords tied around our wrists in blessing. We gave the children of the village their first taste of white-skinned people (okay Augustinus is Asian, but they certainly hadn't seen anything like his Indonesian batik clothing before either). We gave everyone something to laugh about as we took to the dancefloor.

By the way, I must digress here to say that the phenomenon of Wedding Music must be trans-cultural: even though I understood not a word and the music came from a foreign tradition, it was quite clearly music that only gets played at festivities such as weddings. Close your eyes and you could convince yourself that there was an Abba tribute band on stage, blasting out crowd-pleasers with gay abandon.

The food was excellent: vegetable soup, sticky rice, laap (pork, lettuce, mint, chillies and coriander) and bananas. The drink was also excellent: lao lao, the local firewater made from fermented sticky rice, which at 30p a bottle tempted me into setting up some sort of export operation. It was really good! No harsh throat burn, just a warm glow.

But, yes, it was a naughty drink. The vegetarian and abstemious Augustinus was laid low in a matter of hours and had to have a lie down. Frankie & I, with our European tolerance of alcohol, lasted longer but even we couldn't hack it. I fell asleep later on (we had moved on to a countryside bar with Litter, his sister and some friends by then) and Frankie was feeling decidedly dodgy for the next day or two.

I don't remember getting back to the hotel (I don't remember much at all, actually - but Frankie's photos will tell a sorry story I think!) but after a few hours' drunken stupor sleep I managed to get up and go out with Litter to a disco. It was a pity I was feeling as rough as a bear's arse, because I was in no fit state to enjoy the show, but it was an experience nonetheless. Litter knew one of the live singers - she is the chef in the hotel where he is on the reception desk - and was chatting away with her sister, who happened to be sat in the booth behind us.

The next day, much refreshed but still much in need of refreshment, Frankie & I clambered on board the boat that was to be our home for the day as we sailed up the Mekong to Pak Beng. There was some gorgeous scenery to be had: hills crowned with temples; tilled fields; virgin forest; huge sandbanks; crazy mineral deposits glinting purple in the sun. And the extremely low level of the Mekong at the moment meant that a lot of (normally) underwater rocky grags were laid bare. I felt a little bit like I had been miniaturised and left to float through successive rock pools into a waiting sea. Or something like that.

Pak Beng was a stopover town. No permanent electricity, no internet, no hoardes of tourists. Quite nice really. The next day, armed with delicious filled baguettes and a bag of coconut sticky rice (I had seen so many Lao people eating out of plastic bags, I wanted to try it myself; nice, but too sweet for me), we got into another boat and sailed on up to the border town of Huay Xai. This boat was more rudimentary than the last: the wooden benches had no padding and almost no legroom. Thank heavens I had brought my rollmat - you know, it's the first time I've used it in the ten months I've been travelling!

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We visited the mausolea in the company of a German artist who had travelled to Hue with us from Hoi An. He never mentioned his surname, but I've got a feeling he is Sigurd Schneider, whose website is because basically that's the only Sigurd artist I can find who's German. Anyway, he was a nice guy, with lots to say that was interesting.

Hue's downfall was that it was bloody cold and wet. I think I would have liked the city more in less inclement weather. But enough about that. Let's move on to the overnight train to Hanoi. We were in the best class of sleeper carriage, but it was still a little on the basic side. Luckily, I just about fit in the bunk, if I didn't actually move at all during the night and I kept my head away from the metal spike that stuck out from the window wall.

We had run into the same Australian couple that we met a few times along the way. The train was some three hours late arriving in Hue, so we had lots of time to get to know each other. I will have to pop in and see them when I'm in Melbourne in a few months' time. Mea & Andrew were very lovely people.

Hanoi was, thankfully, less cold and wet. We jumped on the back of some motorbikes and found ourselves a guest house in the centre of the Old Town. Hanoi is a beautiful capital, even less brash than Saigon, with a series of lakes breaking up the cityscape and providing serene backdrops for some of the temples and older housing.

The highlight for us in Hanoi was the Water Puppet Theatre. This uniquely Vietnamese art form takes Punch & Judy onto a new and moist level. But that sounds flippant; the marionnettes were at times humourous, at times beautiful and at times spectacular (particularly the fire-breathing dragons). And the music! Oh, the music! Traditional instruments provided the soundtrack to each of the seventeen mini-plays, and there were some instrumental solos too.

The singing was gripping: mostly pentatonic, the sound was reminiscent of the Thai traditional music I heard in Bangkok, but where that was deliberately rustic in tone, this was brutally precise. It was impossible to ignore the piercing notes, and, coupled with the stringed instruments and percussion, the ensemble quite simply absorbed one's attention.

But one instrument was even more astonishing: I don't know what it was, but it was made up of a single string that was plucked with a small barbed spike and then manipulated with a curved string head to change the pitch. The deft handling of this head allowed vibrato, glissando and even step-changes in pitch. The range of the instrument was phenomenally wide, and the sound quite other-worldly. During the solo piece, time stood still and all other sensory input faded away, my mind tuned into the haunting melody and nothing else.

After this rich spectacle, Frankie & I decided to treat ourselves to a rich feast in the form of an up-market Italian restaurant. Wow! Pasta as good as that is hard to find even on the Continent, and the pizza was also first-rate.

Two other highlights of Hanoi should be mentioned: at Ho Chi Minh's Mausoleum we got to see Uncle Ho himself lying in state, embalmed according to the Communist tradition (I've only got to see Chairman Mao to have the hat-trick now!), and we also enjoyed the groovy Revolutionary Museum, which seeks through 1960s architecture and interior design to communicate the message of world communism; whilst a more vintage Vietnamese experience was provided at a beautifully preserved 18th century merchant's house in the historic heart of the city, where we were served traditional tea and could marvel at some fabulous traditional silk paintings.

We took a trip to Ha Long Bay, a UNESCO World Heritage Site in its own right. This is a bay that, according to tradition, is where a giant dragon saved the Vietnamese people by hurling enormous pearls at the ships of an invading fleet from Hainan Island. The thousands of limestone pinnacles dotting the bay are those teeth, and the depression of the bay itself is where the dragon returned to the bowels of the earth (Ha Long meaning Descending Dragon). We had the first night sleeping on the boat in a secluded inlet, and the second night staying on Cat Ba Island.

Days one and three were spent sailing around the bay (day one in low cloud and scenic mist, day three in blazing sunshine). On the first day I got to know a Japanese girl called Yukiko, who taught me some key phrases to describe our day. I think I can remember "The bird returns from behind the grey cliff" and "Today we emerged from the beautiful cave" but I must admit I've forgotten how to say "On the blue sea, under the cloudy sky, between grey islands, the fisherman casts his net from the boat". Ah well, I'll have to ask the next Japanese person I meet.

Day two saw Frankie & me climbing the highest peak of Cat Ba Island to view the whole bay - a truly glorious view. I have to say I enjoy watching birds of prey circling the rocks BELOW me! Then we were brought in our own personal boat to Monkey Island, which we had to reach by kayak, an experience in itself given that it was an inflatable one and we thought we were going to drown at any moment!

On our last evening in Hanoi we went to a road that is dedicated to serving up quality local foods. We sat down and without delay were brought a huge Steamboat of vegetable soup, together with beef, shrimps, tofu, clams, kidney, fish, and a veritable mountain of fresh leaves (mostly mint). This, and the accompanying two noodle varieties, was a most delicious dinner. The evening was rounded off with some custard apple juice in a bar where we suffered a power cut and were then treated to the romantic flicker of emergency candles - how fitting for Valentine's weekend!

The next morning we got up before dawn and made our way to the airport, bound for Vientiane, the capital of the Lao People's Democratic Republic.