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Published: March 21st 2010
Free Buckets in Vang Vieng
Bucket Bar.......free buckets are not such a good idea Afternoon everyone,
It has been a wee while since our last blog, giving you all a break from hearing about our fun antics and the joys of travelling. Our last blog was from Vientiane....seems so long ago now.
We left the quiet streets of Vientiane to head to Vang Vieng, which couldn't be more different. It is a really small place, full of bars showing Family Guy and Friends, but the main action in Vang Vieng was the tubing.
We ended up bumping into a lot of people that we did our trek with in Chiang Mai in Vang Vieng on our first night out. This, coupled with the free buckets every bar gave out, made for a pretty messy night with many funny antics and a very poorly head the next morning. Nursing our hangovers we decided to head down to the river where all the tubing happens.
It's pretty crazy down there, with loads of rope swings and slides into the river, as well as loads of bars. We were feeling a bit too fragile to attempt the swings (good excuse not to do it 😊 ) so just sat in some of the bars
sipping Beerlao while our friends demonstrated how it was done while we took pictures (Helen we took your advice you see). After a nap we felt well enough to hit Q Bar and the infamous 'Bucket Bar' for some more free buckets.
The scenery in Vang Vieng is pretty spectacular so on our last day we hired some bicycles and cycle to The Blue Lagoon and see some of the surrounding caves. These bikes were pretty amazing, they were pink and red and had a wicker basket on the front and a little bell, however no gears so the hills and rocky roads were sometimes tasking. We did a 20km round trip which took us through some Hmong villages and rural Laos.
Our final stop in Laos was Luang Prabang which was a 6 hour journey from Vang Vieng in a minivan. This was at times absolutely terrifying, especially when we were winding around the hills on tiny roads and the driver insisted on testing his breaks before every corner.......... not quite sure what he would have actually done had they not worked.
We arrived in Luang Prabang thankful for our lives and headed out to find a
hostel. We bumped into loads of people who we have met along the way on our first night here. Our first day in Luang Prabang was treated as a 'rest day'. We had massages and facials and spent the day drinking tea and eating cake.... it has to be done every once in a while.
There are some stunning waterfalls just outside Luang Prabang so we headed out there on our second day with a group of other people. The guys had been given a map to a 'secret swimming area' and boys being boys made us spend the afternoon searching for this. This invovled some scary heights and rock climbing through some waterfalls. In the end the two other girls and us decided to give up and head back down to the main waterfall..... the guys did eventually find the secret area and it did look amazing..... to anyone who is heading there soon.
Nightlife in Luang Prabang was limited, there was a 12pm curfew which meant that all the bars had to shut at 11.30pm. To get around this everyone apparently went to the bowling alley, so that's exactly what we all did. It was a
hilarious night, we were on seperate teams, and the alley that Lu was on had a massive slope to the right...... that was there excuse for losing...ha!
When the bowling alley shut we all headed back to the guys hostel (it was much more fun than ours) and spent the rest of the night listening to Irish Mikey's hilarious stories of things he has encountered on his trip.
The rest of our time in Luang Prabang was spent wandering around and exploring, it's a really pretty place. Thw world really is a small place as on our second to last night I bumped into Sophie, a course mate from Uni. Everyone does a pretty similar route in South East Asia as since then we have seen her quite a few times in different places, as we have with the other people we made friends with.
From Luang Prabang we decided to fly to Hanoi, it was a choice between a 36 hour bus or a 45 minute flight.... easy decision really. We were slightly shocked when we got of the plane in Hanoi at about 5pm and it was FREEZING!
Greg arrived the next morning and I went
to meet him at the airport. Was pretty funny as the taxi driver I had tried to drop me off at departures, then looked shocked when I didn't have a backpack with me, and could not understand a word I was saying. I spent about 5 mintues trying to gesture that I wanted to go to arrivals, in the end had to speak to his boss on the phone. When we finally got to arrivals he followed me to the arrivals gate and held up a sign with Greg's name on it.....just in case I had forgotten what he looked like.
We had two days in Hanoi and got straight into wandering around and seeing the sights the second Greg had arrived...no rest when your short on time. I think Greg was a little overwhelmed on his first day by the sheer amount of bikes and the way that you have to cross the roads (just walk across and hope that you don't get run over). We went to a Water Puppet show in Hanoi which Vietnam is apparently famous for. It was good, if not a little bizaare and we were all quite glad it only lasted about
an hour. Hanoi has some massive markets and we wandered around all of these.....they sell anything and everything from eels to Converse. Lu and I picked up a pair of Converse from the shoe market, to cover our toes and stop our feet from freezing.
We were staying in a really good hostel in Hanoi, it had a movie room with THE comfiest sofas in so we ended up spending our evenings watching films and resting, it was far too cold to do anything else.
We did a 3 day trip to Halong Bay from Hanoi which was really good fun. We spent the first day on a boat with about 20 other people crusing around the limestone outcops and kayaking to a cave. Greg asked me and Lu to keep quiet about his canoeing experience... we did not. We spent the first night on the boat and everyone got to know each other quite well through a few games of ring of fire. Greg was all to happy to get the beer funnel out and the rest of the night was spent seeing how much everyone could drink through it. Check out from the rooms on the boat
was 7.30am.....everyone looked a little worse for wear over breakfast. We headed onto a private island with 10 others from our group. It was a small island, really pretty and surrounded by the limestone cliffs. The afternoon was taken up with watersports, I went tubing with another girl on the trip and Greg went with some of the lads. They were a lot nicer to us girls and we only fell off a few times, whereas they made sure that the guys were thrown off at full speed. The evening on the island was spent chatting and playing more drinking games, it ended with everyone stood ontop of tables with our arms around each other singing along to Oasis at the top of our voices... standard Brits.
The day after was the ultimate travel day. It took about 6 hours to get from the island back to Hanoi, and then we had to go and get a 13 hour sleeper bus to Hue. I'm not sure what we though a sleeper bus would be like but we were all a bit shocked when we got on the bus, the beds were pretty tiny. Nevertheless we managed to get some
Around Vang Vieng
We cycled to the caves and lagoons in Vang Vieng...Amazing sleep ( I slept most of the way) and arrived in Hue to find the sun shining.....the complete opposite of Hanoi.
We spent 2 days in Hue and it is a real sightseeing place. We spent the afternoon on our first day wandering around the ruins of The Citadel (it was badly damaged by the Americans in the sixties) and the next day visiting some of the tombs of past emporers.
We got a day bus from Hue to Hoi An and the scenery along the way was amazing. They don't really have hostels in Hoi An, just hotels. So we have spend the last two nights with free internet and a room with a TV with normal channels and a pool (this is in the restaurant area so we have not used it but still).
Hoi An is really small and easy to find our way around so we got bicycles yesterday and spend the day cycling around and to the beach. We went to a local cafe (pretty much someones front room) for a meal one night and it was of dubious quality. It was supposed to be Vegetarian so we were a little alarmed by the
unidentifiable meat in the noodles. We assumed it was just pork of beef so ate a bit of it with the noodles, after trying it on it's own we decided it tasted like neither, nor any other meat we have ever had before.....which leads us to believe it may have been dog.....we think it tasted like dog would.....yum!
We are going to get another sleeper bus now to Nha Trang...the joys!
Hope your all okay,
sending Lots and Loads of Love,
Lu, Clare + Greg xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
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Rachel
non-member comment
Dog! Outrageous! Loving the fact that you ate cake, got massaged and had a facial! Heaven. Glad you guys are still enjoying it xxx