Tube-alicious Vang Vieng

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Vang Vieng and Hannah's Birth

I've been told off for putting the place we're in rather than the place i'm writing about at the top of the blog, so even though we're in Hanoi (Vietnam) this blog is about Vang Vieng in Laos.

Vang Vieng is about as laid back as it gets. The place is full of cafes covered in cushions where you can while away the hours watching re-runs of Friends or Family Guy, slightly bizarre at first, and it did get a little irritating after 3 days of being unable to escape the friends theme tune! That said, it was really good to be able to chill out for a few days.
We arrived at Vang Vieng after a rather uneventful journey from Luang Prabang (a relative first for us considering most of our journeys up until now!) We checked into the first guesthouse we ventured into, paying a bit too much again, 4 pounds each a night, but it waswell worth it to have a nice base for Hannah's birthday and to be right on the river and surrounded by somuch beauty! The first night we were very excitd to be in such a lively and vivacious place again. We met some great people in the bars and slightly overindulged in the cheap buckets. A couple of scary motorbike rides later we found ourselves dancing in bucket bar until the early hours to the sound of quite current English music, which was a great novelty. Just before mid-night (Hannah's birthday) I had a very confusing drunken conversation with a barman who was trying to explain that they did not sell Champagne. A conversation which I would regret the next morning with embarassment in the soberlight of day at such a stupid request considering our current location. The plan for Hannah's birthday was to go tubing and generally make merry again in celebration of her birth. In reality we were both suffering from hangovers of epic proportions and the draw ofhe comfy TV bars was too much to resist. (I wish there were places in the UK that would cater so perfectly for a hang over!) We agreed to have birthday number 2 the next day after we had both fully recovered. (We had discovered over the previous 24 hours that the purpose of tubing was to drink your bodyweight in Laos Laos whiskey whilst drifting down the Namsong, so thought that this should probably wait until our livers stopped aching!) The next day was fantastic - in the words of HRH Gordan Ramsey tubing DONE!

Over the next couple of days we hired bikes to take a slow ride through the countryside and went cave-tubing and Kayaking down the Nam Song. Cave tubing was amazing! The caves are so amazing inside,if a little scary because of the pitch-darkness and Barney being a little too big for the small crevices which we had to crawl through commando-style (think military, not without-pants!). Kayaking was good too, with a few little rapids along the way to spice up the journey. One of our guides was nicknamed the 'Snake-hunter' because he stuck really close to the river bank looking for snakes, he found one about halfway down the river and continued to row with it wrapped around his oar and arm(!) all the time looking pleased with his massive snake-shaped evening meal!

After 4 days, we found Vang Vieng to be a little bit of a Jeckell-and-Hyde town. The town itself is litterally filled to bursting point with backpackers and along with the tubing came the lager-louts you might find in any British City at 2 in the morning, we realised we'd made the best of our time there and were pleased to be moving on. (Large groups of men arguing drunkenly and aggressively with Tuk Tuk drivers over 20p fares was NOT the reason we came to SE Asia!)

We made the 4 hour bus journey to Vientiane, the Laos capital,the next day and unfortunately we were both thoughougly unimpressed... and that is all we have to say about Vientiane.

We're now in Hanoi and are about to take a 3 day organised trip to Halong Bay, then on to Hoi An after that. We probably won't update again until we reach Hoi An so...

Until next time blog fans... Thanks for the comments,and keep them coming!! It's really nice to know someone's reading!!

H & B x

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