White knuckle rides thro mountains on to our next stop - the party capital of Laos - Vang Vieng....

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Today's our last morning here with our bus due to pick us up at 1.30 Vang Vien bound, but we want to make the most of it here so we have a cycle down to the Mekong and along it taking in places we hadn 't had a chance to see on foot. We cycled over a bridge which then took us to the non-touristy part of Luang Prabang, this was quite interesting seeing how the real people live, the ones who don't still live in the old bamboo type style villages, we passed a market, had a quick look around then headed back to the tourist part where the food was defintely better (ha!) and had a chill out in yet another pretty bar before making our way back along the Mekong and back in time for our bus. We still saw some interesting points along the Mekong which would have been nice to have stopped off at and chilled, but just not the time, yet again could really have done with another day here!! Even so am still excited at the prospect of our next adventure and finding out all about the 'tubing' vibe in VV!!!
Well we get picked up in a tuk tuk to take us to our bus station for our main van to VV, the van seems crammed and is a mare getting everything on, especially with all my luggage, aargh!! But they then decide to let half the bus get off and get on another bus, hooray, Karen and me have the whole back seat to ourselves, or so we thought until about an hour into the journey our driver stops to pick up some locals so we lose our spare seat, damn! It is actually quite a spacious bus so no real complaints and the main dilemma i have is whether to get stuck into my book or admire the again amazing scenery! I decide the scenery comes first as i can read the book any time so spent an enjoyable 4 hours just gazing out the window at the views and local villages, animals etc, all so different to anywhere else i've ever been...Only slightly scary thing was the drops beneath us especially being the amount of overtaking our driver was doing, at these points I just thought back to Jim, my tarot reading guy and he'd predicted my future way too positive to end in a crash at a bottom of a mountain in Laos, haha!! So with this comforting knowledge i just treated it like a white knuckle ride with great views...... oh and also an absolutely amazing sunset :-) It's a shame for the last hour and a half of the journey it's dark but then our extra passenger is dropped off and we do at least have loads of room at the back so manage to dose, before we know it we've arrived in Vang Vien, the party central capital of Laos! At this point we have no idea whether we are going to love it or hate it.......
We get a tuk tuk to our hotel which i'd booked online months ago, only to be told we had only booked for the day ahead, luckily i had the confirmation so they 'conveniently' found us somewhere else (thank god for confirmations!!) We actually landed on our feet as the other place was much nicer backing on to the river with a nice balcony :-) Result!!!
We then went out and got a meal in as i'd heard about a bar playing ' 'friends', this was the main thing that had put me off VV with my hatred of US sitcoms but we came to a happy compromise that Karen would sit the side that Friends was on and I could sit and 'people' watch instead, which is very interesting in VV so the fear of my life being taken over by dire US sitcoms has already evaporated and then along comes dinner, very nice, AND they sell mint tea - I'm loving this place already, despite 'friends' in the background, haha!!
After our meal we had a lookie around and decided there were a good few trips to do here and it's not just about the tubing as i'd heard before so already on our first night we plan out our next few days..... to include tubing, caves, bike rides and a mountain trek (and hopefully some yoga and being this is spose to be party central some partying too :-) ) Ah well we keep telling each other we'll get our chill out time on 4000 islands, however everything we do including the treks is still chilled out to me, but i guess at some point we will get the need to just laze in a hammock or by the river and do nowt all day :-) But not yet, haha..... Tomorrow tubing is calling......

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