Vientiene & Vang Vieng

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April 15th 2008

Published: April 18th 2008

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Cabbie and Gill on tour

Traffic jam and lovely moped

Vientiene & Vang Vieng Feb 08

From Hanoi we got a 24 hour bus to Vientiene, the capital of Laos. The journey was as bad as you would expect a 24 hour bus journey to be. We had heard a lot about beer Laos, so as soon as we had crossed over the Lao border we went into a shop and sampled our first, it is my favourite beer on the trip so far and it made the rest of the journey much more bearable.

Considering that Vientiene is the capital it is the most laid back place I have ever been too. I couldn't believe it was a city, there is more to do in Telens! We saw a couple of monuments and then spent the rest of the day sat in a little outdoor bar by the river bank drinking beer lao and trying to catch up with this dam blog !

The next day we went to Vang Vieng, on the way we met a girl called Kat, she was going there to meet her friends Jack and Sarah. They were all really nice and we spent most of our time there with them. Vang

The legendary Beer Lao

making the nightmare bus seem ok

Vieng was again a really laid back place but with a real backpacker vibe. One day we all went tubing which was brilliant! You hire a big rubber ring each and basically just float down the river, on either side of the river there are bars and if you want a drink you just wave a guy with a bamboo stick who will pull you in. Most of the bars have some kind of swing or zip rope into the water, at the first bar only Sarah was brave enough to have a go and the rest of us wimped out. After a few hours of drinking, floating and more drinking we got to the end bar and had enough dutch courage to go on the swing. Cabbie and I climbed up to the swing and then squaabbled over who would go first, Cabbie ended up going first and it was great fun so we did it again about five more times. Unfortunately we don't have the pictures to put on here,

On a evening there are lots of bars but everywhere closes at midnight which is a bit strange in such a big backpacker area. The only thing

Writing the blog

actually, more drinking than writing

that thing that stays open later is a stall which makes banana and chocolate pancakes mmmmm nice change from a kebab on the way home!

Another day I put my faith in Cabbie and we hired a motorbike to explore the surrouning countryside. We found our way to the blue lagoon which was really beautiful. I couldn't believe just how blue it actually was. There are also lots of caves around so we hired some torches and decided to explore one of them. Cabbie isn't really keen on pitch black caves or enclosed spaces so I went first, it was a series of deep tunnels leading into small openings there was no one else around. it was quite scary as our 'quality torches which were held together by a bit of tape could go out at any moment which would leave us stuck in total darkness not knowing the way out. I climbed into one of the openings and I was just admiring how pretty it was when next to me I saw the biggest spider I have ever seen in my life! Do they have poisonous spiders in Laos? I didn't wait to find out, I got out