Tubing............

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Heellooooooo,

Am currently sitting in an internet cafe in Laos' capitol city of Vientiane.

Our first pit stop in northern Laos (Luang Prabang) was a nice place to start of our experience of the country as its quite a chilled out little town on the Mekong. Daily life is pretty slow, people tend to laze around in cafes alot and there are more than a few temples which are nice to pop into every now and again. Other than this however there is not much to do. We explored for a day, eating in one of the many baguette stalls and visited the waterfalls the following day. The waterfalls were INCREDIBLE. Obviously having visited many in Africa and Thailand my standards were aimed high but the one we visited here blew the others out of the water. The pools were crystal clear it resembled and oasis. First we climbed right to the top searching for some seclusion but after puffing ourselves out and sweating probably my entire body weight we found nothing and went down to the regular spot. We went quite early so had the pool to ourselves for a while but it eventually filled up with excited tourists. We chilled out in the massive group of girls we had now aquired, swinging off rope swings into the lagoon below and jumping off the rocks. A friend Claire managed to give herself a black eye whilst catapaulting herself from the rope which then gave us reason to head back to our guest house. The nightlife was pretty nice there, everything has a kind of outdoor pub garden type feel. We keep bumping into a friend we met on Koh Phanghan - Linda. Its sooooo strange already we've met soooo many people in different places who we've met along the way. It feels like everyone in the world is doing the same trail as us which is a bit off putting. People call it the 'banana pancake trail,' this involves doing everything and anything the lonely planet guide book tells you. We're hoping to get off it pretty soon. Just a quick note - still with Laura and Laura but are making seperate ways tomorrow as one Laura goes north and the other making the way down south with us.

Ok so after Luang Prabang we made our way to Van Vieng (a banana pancake classic). The town is surrounded by massive juts of rocks the size of mountains the other side of a beautiful river which again is surrounded by lush greenery. The town itself isn't so lovely as it's jam packed with tourist hangouts including shops selling the same 'beer - lao' t-shirts in every shape and size and bars and cafes playing re-runs of friends episodes where hungover tourists sit and laze. The main attraction of going to this place is to partake in an activity called tubing. We'd heard about it along the way and decided this was something we would do just the once to say we had and then move on. Along the side of the river upstream from town lays a whole stack of bars in a row, the aim of tubing is the rent yourself this rubber ring type thingy, sit in it, and float downstream to all the different bars possible where they grab you and clip you in. In each of the bars they have different slides or rope swings or trapeezes into the river so its all a big laugh and everyone gets involved. Different music blares out from the different spot and you choose whichever one takes your fancy. Whiskey shots are given out for free in all the bars and of course buckets are always on the menu and so it makes for a pretty messy occassion. We didn't buy tubes oursleves as found generally floating down the river was cheaper and funner. The trapeezes were great but really really high I was terrified but plucked up the courage in the end. It was really good fun. The last bar consists of mud. Thats it pretty much. Everyone sits in these little mud baths chatting. We'd met people who had got so addicted to the fun and games that they stayed there for weeks tubing every day. As much fun as it was (and i'm ashamed to say it but it was) we couldn't bring ourselves to do it more than once as it really is an activity with no cultural relevance whatsoever and couldn't quite justify spending any more time there. Nightlife was pretty good there as we found some rock and roll bars (so welcoming when all you here is cheesy r'n'b the whole time) and great people. We hung around Van Vieng a few days as monsoon has started to creep up on us making us hostel-ridden one day.

We've now come to the capitol city which is so unlike anything I expected. It's quite small but has really beautiful architecture everywhere and seems quite affluent with its shopping malls, street lights, hotels and bars. I'm yet to see the really sleepy Laos everyone keeps telling me about. We seemed to hit a jackpot deal with a hotel last night having a family room for five of us girls but now one of us has left and are back to the dives. Went to the Vietnam embassy today to get visas so its been one of those 'get things done' days rather than anything else. Will probably explore a bit more tomorrow before heading further south to Pakse where we are hoping to get away from beer laos t-shirts for a while.

Lots of love!


xxxx

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