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Published: February 12th 2007
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Tubing
Tubing, my new sporting hobby! Singapore 16th January 2007
Ruth lands safely and we meet at our uber trendy hostel in Singapore. As you can imagine we had lots of catching up to do and many hugs before it sunk in that we were actually about to start our adventure. We (well i) had some shopping to do as ruth brought my new bank card, yipee! But the main task was to get our Vietnam visa as we had a flight to catch in 2 days. After unsuccessfully getting our visas due to singapores stupid half working day hours we had to completely change our route to Thailand, argh! As we hadn’t looked into Thailand yet we decided to go to krabi area as we heard it was nice there.
Thailand
First stop was Bangkok where we struggled not to shop as the clothes were amazing but no room for that! Flight to krabi and then we ended up in Ao nang on the quiet beach. We had a lovely little bungalow for pretty cheap. We spent a few pleasant days here. The place was so so touristy though rather like spain but in Thailand. There were loads of families and couples and
Thai Islands
The islands close to Ao nang hardly any backpackers.
We took a nice boat trip to a few islands which were overcrowded but beautiful and had some great time to properly catch up. Ruth and I were dying to meet people and after a particularly rude KB from a group of australians we were happy to meet a couple of nice Danish guys who we rescued from praying lady boys!
After a few days in Ao nang we headed to ko phi phi (where the ‘beach’ was filmed) as you can imagine this was also a very touristy place which spoiled the beauty of the island. It was like a completely different place to Ao Nang, hardly any couples and mainly young people of which 90% were Swedish, never seen so many beautiful people in one place!! After our lovely and cheap bungalow in Ao nang our expectations were high but we couldn’t find anything livable for the same price so ruth treated me to a really nice place for a night (till we found something else) for a belated xmas present. We actually ended up staying here the whole time as every half decent place was full. It was lovely and we had a great
Ko phi phi
the lovely hotel we paid the price for! time getting ready for a night out with our hotel hairdryer etc! Went out for a few cocktails but no buckets which had heard were laced with amphetamines and ended up meeting our Danish friends. We had a great night with them teaching and learning new drinking games, ahh nothing changes! The dessert game was altered and our new names were Ruth = welsh cakes, Ary = Haggis, Casper = Danish bacon, Bob= Pork chops! We were all crying with laughter by the end of it.
We spent the rest of the time lazing by the beach and giving into our shopping desires by purchasing a few dresses. I also went for a couple of dives; Ruth came too and went snorkeling, which I was pretty disappointed with. This was supposed to be one of the best places to dive in Thailand but visibility was bad and there wasn’t much to see.
Laos - part 1
Van Vieng
Once we flew back to Thailand we made our way to Laos on an overnight bus. After a not to bad bus journey we hopped straight onto another bus to Van vieng. On this bus I met my first
Danes
pork chops, welsh cakes, danish bacon and haggis fellow scot, Kat. We also met her travel companion Liz and some others who we would spend the next week with. Most of the bus piled out into the same hotel which was so cheap after phi phi. We had a look around and went for dinner and a famous beer lao, which lived up to expectations. Van vieng is seriously chilled out. All the restaurants had lay down seats with friends, simpsons, family guy or a film playing. There was also opportunity to have ‘happy’ shakes, pizza, cakes which we avoided, being the good girls we are!
The next day was probably our most fun day to date- TUBING! Its actually really hard to describe but we will try our best. So you float down a tube (as you can see in the photos) stopping off a ‘bars’ which are really just wooden verandas. At the bars you have your beer lao and a rope swing to throw yourself back into the water. The bars get bigger and ropes higher and longer. We freezed our butts off the first day but beer lao kept us going. Our tubing group of about 10 then went for dinner and a few
Vang Vieng
Breath taking views of the karks of us went to another bar with hammocks and a camp fire. Ruth and I again brought our drinking games which alex and nick took part in. We had a great night with some vodka buckets (no drugs in these ones!) and hammock wars!
We then made the mistake of going tubing with no beer lao the next day, it was still brilliant fun but so so cold. We also went down the whole way this time which is about 4 km and took about 3 hrs (not including bar stops!) so we were delighted when we reached the last bar which had a big camp fire.
Laos is actually pretty cold at night at this time of year so we wrapped up as warm as we could and then went for another group dinner.
The next day Kat, Liz, Tously (oz friend) and Brain (Belgian) traveled up Luang Prabang with us.
Ok so this hasd already been quite long so going to post it now and carryon with laos and veitnam (where we are now after). Again not enough photos up as its really slow to upload but will add more soon.
xxxx
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Thomo
non-member comment
tubing
the tubing sounds like great fun. looks like you're getting the modern day backpacking experience now!