Mountains, Rivers and, of course, Tubing...

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Saturday 3rd January:

We left Vientiane as soon as possible the next morning after a restless night, waking up every 5 minutes with nightmares of bedbugs! We caught a locals bus to Vang Vieng. There is no concept of a full bus in Laos. We boarded the bus with no seats available. The bus driver said he would make seats for us so we got on the bus thinking he would pull out fold-up chairs but instead he got on and walked through the aisle and approached a few people in the seats and said the Laos equivalent of 'shove up' and got Toby, Marco and Sophie to squeeze onto the end of an already full two-seater bench! I was the lucky one who got to sit on a makeshift seat on what looked like part of the engine, next to the driver. I assume it was part of the engine as it was blasting my feet with hot air for 3 hours. I even had the driver offer to look after my bag for the duration instead of clutching it on my lap and having to squeeze my bag and feet up onto the engine when anyone wanted to get on or off! When we arrived in Vang Vieng my first impressions were that it was a tacky touristy town but with great scenery. Marco had been given a tip for a place to stay and wasn't going to relent until we found it. Thank goodness he did as we were away from the main town so it was much quieter and the scenery from our bungalow was amazing. Out the front we had the river and out the back we had the mountains. It was gloriously pretty!! We tried the local speciality of Laap, minced spicy meat salad - delicious! - and with met Sophie and Marco for drinks and a game of pool in the evening.

Sunday 4th January:

We'd found a map the night before that had routes around the karsts behind Vang Vieng and hired motorbikes to go explore. There were many caves around the area so we decided to head to the biggest one we could find - Poukham. We zipped around the dirt tracks between two enormous jungle covered karsts. The entrance to the cave was up a practically a sheer cliff face so we scrabbled up the craggy cliff face to the entrance to the cave. The cave had a reclining Buddah in the middle of the main cave and we climbed through the small openings in the rocks to other cavernous openings, mainly in the dark! Luckily we'd bought a torch! We carefully climbed back down the rocks and leapt into the beautiful blue lagoon at the foot of the mountains. Very 'refreshing' ie cold! We dried off as much as possible and got back on the bikes to do the rest of the mountain path. We took a wrong turn and ended up on a really churned up rocky road. We fell off too but we weren't going very fast, it was more like we just fell to the side from a stand still! We got back onto the right track and headed around the karst back towards Vang Vieng. We slowed down to ask if we were in the right village and not still lost and they confirmed we were and invited us into some sort of village party! We went in and tried to work out what they were celebrating, could have been a wedding but no one spoke much English so we were guessing. We had a few beers there and a dance, had my sunglasses pinched!, then we went off on the bikes again, back through the glorious countryside to Vang Vieng. Went for BBQ in the evening and had banana pancakes for afters - I was very excited about the BBQ!!

Monday 5th January:

Met Marco and Sophie for breakfast but Marco was feeling coldy so they decided not to come tubing with us. We went to the tubing place , picked up a tube then caught the tuk tuk to the Organic Farm where the tubing starts. We started with a Mojito at the farm, well, we had to really! All proceeds went to the local kids' school so we did it for the kids! Then we got into the tubes. The river water was rather chilly but we didn't stay in it for long, a mere 50m (enough time to smack my coccyx on a rock!), then we got out for drinks at the nearest bar along the river! We watched people on the swings and zip wires over the river and thought it very dangerous. However, the more we drank the local whiskey shots (free with every drink purchased!) the more it seemed like fun! 3 bars later and I was being pushed up the ladder, knees knocking, by the bum by Toby and coaxed into jumping off. We were with a Scottish couple and they had both done it, as well as Toby, so not to be branded a chicken I had to jump. So I did. It was fun! I got out of the river to a round of applause from everyone in the bar! They all watched me go up and didn't think I'd do it! It was so fun I just had to do it again. A few more bars, a few more beers and we were back on the river for the last long stretch back to Vang Vieng. I'm not sure what happened next but I somehow lost Toby! I'd managed to overtake him somehow and was shouting back for him but eventually he stopped calling back. Well, you can't drown in a tube so I wasn't too worried! Little did I know he'd lost his tube!! When I got back I was looking around the town for him, hoping he'd made it back and was sat in a bar waiting for me. I looked for ages and couldn't find him! Then my contact lens fell out so i was walking around half blind and boyfriendless! I went back to the bungalow to see if he was there. Then I dropped my shorts off a bridge. I was relieved to find Toby, drunk, back at the bunglow! Then the food poisoning struck and I was being sick all night!! All in all, quite an eventful day!!

6th January 2009 (Tuesday):

Sick day today! Didn't get up to much as we were both feeling rather rough!

7th January 2009 (Wednesday):

Still feeling a bit rough, we caught the bus to Luang Prabang. My seat in the bus wasn't secured down so every time we turned right I fell into Toby's lap! It was an interesting journey through the beautiful twists and turns of the mountain roads! We arrived in Luang Prabang for the late afternoon an had just enough time for buffalo scratchings and tom yum soup by the Mekong before the sun went down. We took a quick look around the night market and we retired to bed.

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