My first truly bad breakfast! We thought we'd try somewhere different and went to a little restaurant overlooking the river. Well we must have been paying for the view because the food was bad!
A lazy afternoon after checkout just mooching about and I swapped a new book. (Sarah will appreciate this one - Reading Petals in the Wind by VA!) Reminds me of you sis!!
We caught a minibus from Luang Prabang to Vang Vieng at about midday. The weather here has just been so so so hot! Plus i think my anti malarial tablets have made my skin more sensitive to the sun so I have started to go brown without really being in the sun at all!
The minibus journey was 110k Kip about 8.40 pounds. It took about 6 hours on very twisty mountain road! Started to feel a little bit sick my the end of the journey. But I was distracted by a fairly cute guy from Leeds who sat next to me.
Arrived in Vang Vieng at about 7ish. Vang Vieng is basically a party town. Travellers stop off here because you can tube down the Nam Khon River?? Its such weird tourist town. A mix between, an 18-30 holiday in Greece (Lynsey & Harriet - you know what I mean!!) and freshers week!
So we found some very cheap accomodation -30k Kip a night for the room 2.30 between two of us!!
Had some dinner and caught an early night.
Vang Vieng - 22nd May
Most people don't start the tubing until about mid day so we decided to walk to a cave in the morning where you could also go swimming. This was really pretty actually and at least we got a glimpse at the other side of Vang Vieng, as it really beautiful down by the river - with stunning mountains.
At about midday we went tubing. The four of us - Shona, Anika, Kate and I all bought the same sunglasses to take tubing as we've been told we'd lose anything we took with us. Big Blues Brother style (ripoff) raybans.
So we hired tubes and got dropped to the first bar on the river. Whiskey shots before we even got into the bar plus we had our names written on us in permanent marker. At this point we decided to embrace our inner teenager and go with it.
To cut a long day short we drank far far too many Whiskey buckets and copious free whiskey shots. They have huge slides at all the different bars and you can just float down between each one. After about 6pm the memory goes a bit hazey!
Managed to stay out until about 12pm. Each of the bars during the day is affliated to a bar in town and they give you wrist bands. When we went to the bars it meant more free whiskey buckets, Argh!
Vang Vieng to Vientiane - 23rd May
Woke up rather predictably with a monster hangover. But this place is set up for hangovers with all the bars playing Friends/Family Guy DVDs and bed seats with lots of pillows.
We caught the bus to Vientiane - should have only taken 3hours took 5 as the bus broke down and had to go soo slowly.
So we arrived feeling worn out and still hangover. We found a really nice guesthouse and decided to treat ourselves. First night with AC and a TV what a treat!!
Vientiane - 24th May
We all decided that 160k kip a room was too expensive so we moved to the guesthouse we had been trying to find the night before.
Caught a Taxi out to the Buddha park. A really strange gothic mix of Hindu and Buddist statues!! Weather is so scorching hot!
We had lunch at the park overlooking the Mekong River to Thailand it was awesome.
For dinner and our last night in Laos we decided to treat ourselves to a lovely French dinner, red wine and steak! Beautiful - sat outside the restaurant in a little square with a fountain. We could have been in France except the meal was probably a fifth of the price.
Off to Hanoi tomorrow.
Love to all R x
