Blogs from Vang Vieng, West, Laos, Asia - page 13

Geo: 18.9401, 102.357Vang Vieng, a town that seems to have lost its soul and fallen in to a viscous cycle of a constant flow of drunken backpackers, but beyond this town lies beautiful landscape that offers heaps of activities such as the infamous tubing, rock climbing, trekking and kayaking etc.To get here, we hopped on a 6hr mini van ride through some amazing mountain and jungle scenery but on horrible road conditions with holes and rugged dirt sections, landslides are also commonly apparent.On arrival we found a nice guesthouse for a pretty cheap price that included everything including hot water, four baby puppies, television and a mountain view balcony for a partial sunset. We walked around town and found there was a day kayaking trip to Vientiane which immediately appealed to us and a great way ... read more

I got picked up from the guesthouse in a tuk tuk which I guessed as we weren't putting our bags on the roof was taking us to the minibus funnily though some of the other passengers hadn't guessed this and thought we were doing a four hour trip in a tuk tuk with our bags on our knees. Anyway we were loaded into the minibus and were on our way. It was stunning scenery that we passed through, and the road was bumpy, windy, then a bit more bumpy and to top it off the driver spent most of the time swatting mosquitos! So it made for a fun and comfortable trip! The minibus dropped us off outside a guesthouse in the town but a short walk towards the river and a guy at Johnnys ... read more

So I will be a happy man if I never have to see a bus again in my life. I left Chiang Mai and head to the Thai/Laos boarder and stayed there for a night. The next day I got a boa across the Mekong and entered Laos with 2 Italian guys from the guesthouse in Chiang Mai. WE were mant to get the boat down the river to Luang Prubang but were talked out of it because of the weather and got on a local bus instead. Instead of arriving in Luang Prubang at 9:30pm we arrived at 1:30am, 15 hours after we had hopped on the bus... We managed to find a guesthouse and I think we were all happy just to get a bed. Luang Prubang is a great little town with a ... read more

Today we decided to rent bikes as we wanted to see the Blue Lagoon which is about 7km from the town, on the way to rent the bike we met two of the girls from tubing yesterday, Elisa and Edel. So they decided to join us. So we got our bikes which were like a euro each for the day and we got a free map (it was hand drawn with alot of detail, not to scale) so off we went. We had kinda shitty bikes but they did the job just about but what we didn't realise is that the road to the blue lagoon is on an incline, with more potholes (or mini lakes) then road also the road is made out of hard core not tarmac so it was very bumpy, not kind ... read more

Okay we have a bit of a holiday from our holiday! I'm obvioulsy sicker than we first thought, because totally unlike me, I sleep for about 4 days - day and night!! Seriously I have never slept so much, and I can barely keep my eyes open for more than a minute! I feel a bit sorry for Rosie having to put up with me, but it actually lashed rain for the 4 days, so there wasn't too much to do anyway. She was fine about it, and caught up on her sleep too! One of the days we have no electricity for the day because they had to hook up the supply to the new bank, so we didn't even have tv and A/C let alone wifi! The furthest we go for these few days ... read more