Happy pizzas

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I left gorgeous, cultured, chilled out Louang Prabang 3 days ago, and after a 6 hour (suprisingly painless) bus journey through some awesome scenary arrived in a town called Viang Vieng. This place is described in the guides as a backpackers hangout, and it makes a stop-off point between Louang Prabang and Laos's capital Vientiane.

We are going to be here for another two nights as its got some good climbing (I managed to bag another 6b - woohoo!), but thats not what attracts the hordes of backpackers out here.

What attracts them, is a massive number of bars where people can get absolutely wasted every night on various substances, and then sit around doing absolutely nothing all day, until they go out and do it all over again. The only thing that seems to break up a day of doing nothing is by going tubing - which involves sitting in a rubber ring and floating down the mekong at about 1 mile an hour, and getting wasted in various bars on the way down.

Now, I don't normally judge others, and this place is fun for a couple of days of chilling out and having a few beers with other backpackers, but some people have told me they came here for a week, went to Louang Prabang for a day and then came back to Vang Vieng for another couple of weeks as its the best place they have been to on their entire world travels - I find this opinion more than a little weird...

Anyway, we are going to try tubing this afternoon, so maybe I'll change my opinion after I've actually tried it myself! Apparently there are some crazy rope swings along the way to keep things interesting...

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