Vang Vieng - 02/06-05/06

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We arrived at 1:30amcovered in grime from the bus and unfortunately the hostel we wanted was closed so we had to pay for a very scruffy hostel. A beds a bed I guess but let's just say we were not staying here another night! We made our way to Easy Go Hostel in the morning and were greeted by really friendly staff who immediately invited us to go tubing with them the following day. We went out to explore after we played a little PlayStation and crossed a bamboo bridge that went out into the mountains. We weren't sure whether it was the right direction as the path on our phones didn't seem to exist in real life - oh well! We were also overtaken by groups of screaming Chinese tourists on dune buggies who were going very very slowly avoiding the mud puddles. (who goes on Buggies and AVOIDS mud??) Eventually we were totally on our own, nobody apart from a few rice farmers were knocking about and found a beautiful natural rapid river to cool in which we had great fun in.

We headed back into town to check out the highly recommended 'Space Bar' 3 guesses on what this place was selling.... there were lots of people pretty intoxicated, drinking, smoking and inhaling laughing gas.

The hostel owner got up at 10am and immediately told everyone to start drinking as we were getting picked up to go tubing at 1ish. It was a sick day, we had plenty of people in our hostel drinking and chatting early on which gradually seemed to fill up as time went on. We headed out to the river to start the tubing, it was a perfect day with not a cloud in the sky and the first bar was 30 metres down the river! There were drinking games, splashing, playing football, another bar, more drinking, ping pong, basketball but before we knew it the sun was going down so we grabbed our tubes and thought it best to probably start to go home. We weren't even close to making it back. So we got off early and were beckoned over by waiting tuk tuks who eventually took us back. W were quite fortunate as it was probably another 3k away and a monsoon started not long after. Back to Space...... then bed.

Oooooooooft Char was definitely worse for ware with Jack following closely behind. That morning was a struggle but thought what better than to head out for some Kayaking. We pinched a really good deal by hopping on with another couple from the UK and had a great day! The route was pretty much the same as the day before but managed to get to the end this time and actually see the river. The views were awesome as expected and managed to get a cheeky swim in here and there. This took up most of the afternoon so feeling a little bit more human we made the jump and went out to eat at a Korean restaurant. That next morning we decided to head further south....

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