Vang Vien & Vientiane, Laos

From Luang Prabang we caught a 7 hour bus ride to Vang Vien. I feel travel sick the whole way, throwing up 10 minutes before arriving, Mark was ill too so I'm blaming the bus. We walk around in a bit of a daze for a while, not helped by the fact that half the guesthouses in our guidebook seem to have disappeared, then stumble accross Pho Khet, which has ok rooms, slightly manky bathroom, is fairly cheap and has an amusing name which pretty much sums up how we felt at that point! Vang Vien is pretty small and apart from the place we have dinner the first night (which also offers opium shakes and weed pizza) every meal was accompanied by an episode of friends. We put off tubing til the last day we're there to give my hand a chance to heal enough to be able to pull myself out of the river. Tubing is absolutely amazing. I'd recommend everyone to go, easily the highlight of Laos. You're given a truck inner tube, driven a while up the river and you just sit in it, drifting from bar to bar. Most of it is fairly shallow, and the end part into Vang Vien is really slow (in fact we gave up and walked it). The scenery is fantastic, lush green irregularly shaped mountains, and we had a lovely hot day. Most of the bars have zip slides or swings into the water (I gibbed out and left these to the boys).

The trip to Viantiane was an uneventful 3 hours. As we weren't too sure where we were we grabbed a tuktuk to take us to the guesthouse. He drove us round the block and dropped us a couple of hundred meters from where we'd started. By the wrong guesthouse! Not completely his fault though as we later found the one we were looking for didn't exist anymore. We eventually found somewhere with a 3-bed dorm for the bargain price of $2 each a night. It was only worth that though as the bed was rock hard and it was a shared bathroom. Our strategy of deploying beer mattresses was thwarted by all the bars shutting at 10.30, at the latest. Overall Vientiane was a bit disappointing, the whole place is best described as a really quiet building site, not many people but lots of ongoing construction, or destuction. The lunch hours which are extended by an hour gave us a few problems when trying to visit the city museum, we even spotted a few security guards sleeping on the job. Tuk tuk drivers chilled out in hammocks slung up in the back, mumbling a half hearted "tuktuk?" as we walk past- the least pressure we've had anywhere. Lots and lots of young children in Laos. On the day we leave Innes & I get up early to go for a swim before our afternoon flight. Laos national (open air) swimming pool was completely deserted and a really nice bit of exercise.