Blogs from Vang Vieng, West, Laos, Asia - page 16

It was an early one today to make sure that I was packed and had enough time for breakfast before our pickup. I could feel the temperature starting to rise as I walked up the street with my bag, it was going to be a hot one. I arrived at the bakery where Nick, Lisa and Nicky had already ordered and were drinking their mugs of tea. I decided on omelette today rather than a boat load of pastry and was glad I had because it was delightful. It was 8.15am as the tuc tuc drivers started to hassle us and we had begun to get fidgety about the fact that Tim and Matt hadn't shown their faces yet, so I wandered over to make sure they were up. It turned out that we needn't have worried ... read more

From tranquil Vientiane, we went lively party town of Vang Vieng. Vang Vieng is a must-stop on the Banana Pancake Trail through Asia (Banana Pancake Trail is the route most travelers take through SE Asia - so named because you can always find banana pancake stalls catering to Western tastes). The main attraction in Vang Vieng is 'Tubing', which is where you hire a inner tube from town and then get dropped off 4 KM upstream. You simply lie back in the tube and gently float back to town. Along the way, you get pulled in (literally) to loads of riverside bars selling cheap booze (alongside other 'Happy' stuff). The bars have high trapeze swings over the river and zip lines that you can whizz down to the water. Something Adam really enjoyed. We lost track ... read more

The unfortunate thing when doing a group tour with fixed travel days is that you're often stuck on the group tour schedule. The tour I am on has given me about a week in Laos and it hasn't been enough. Luang Prabang was a great start, from there we moved on to Vang Vieng and I'm not sure that the latter is really showing Laos for Laos. I will explain. Vang Vieng is famous throughout Thailand and Laos for it's "tubing experience." Basically you rent a tube, a tuk tuk will take you and a group of about 10 other people up the river to the start of the float. We started our tubing day around 12 noon and went until about 6. In 3km worth of floating there are 30 bars alongside the rivers. When ... read more

Of all the countries I planned on visiting over my vacation through SE Asia, Laos was the one I most eagerly anticipated. Throughout my travels, it is the country I had heard the least about, yet the reviews I had received were unanimously positive, and it has become abundantly clear to me now why this is so. Lush jungles, wild rivers, and colossal mountains converge together throughout this beautiful land making it the perfect place for adventurous travelers the world over. Despite its relative remoteness from some of the other major tourist attractions in Asia, I found it to be well worth the effort travelling along treacherous roads in uncomfortable transportation in order to reach this gem. Something about the secluded beauty in Laos truly touched me in ways I cannot fully describe and my ... read more

well.....i'm not really sure where to even begin with this entry! life has all of a sudden gone a bit mental and I'm not really sure how it happened!.... it started fine, when we were in Chiang Rai getting drunk with a stoned tatooist before then deciding to hire pedal bikes from him and cycle 20 miles down a road not disimilar to the A27 so we could see a white temple, with bikes with 1 gear and wonky wheels...... so I can only assume it started going wrong when we left Thailand for Laos..... oh wait... before leaving Thailand I met 2 girls at the cash machine..... we left Thailand on the oldest, rusty bus you can imagine, the kind that chickens roam around freely and your luggage is balanced on the roof! The journey ... read more