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Published: October 2nd 2010
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Well we bid farewell to Sihanoukville, and had a quick stopover in Siem Reap. The girls went off to see the temples while I rested, was feeling quite ill at this point but thankfully recovered and it was off to Laos.
This was an epic journey to say the least. The four of us, myself, Louise, Meabh and Liam (forgot to mention this Welsh guy that the girls had met in Bangkok airport and had been travelling with us since) set off. We left Siem Reap at 5.30am on a Saturday morning and didn’t make it to our final destination until 4pm on the Monday... yes it was a total of 34 and ½ hours in transit. We were on 4 different buses with stopovers along the way that had a serious lack of decent food and toilets (however this was Asia so toilets were always dodgy... squat toilets with no toilet roll and a very pungent smell and a serious lack of cleanliness... toilet roll has become an accessory in my handbag that is just as important as my wallet!). However we did finally make it to Laos and believe me it was worth every minute of the challenging
journey!
Vang Vieng in Laos is home to the famous tubing and for those of you who haven’t heard of tubing ill briefly try to explain. Everyone heads off to bar number 1 beside a river with a VERY strong current with a big rubber ring. After a few drinks you venture up and swing over the river and jump in, you are then hauled in and you definitely have another drink... Have fantastic videos of us on this swing will try to get videos uploaded soon or at least post a link to the videos, still not very good at all this technical stuff!! Then the crowd starts moving along and you get into your rubber ring and “tube” down the river to the next bar. Getting off it these bars is a magnificent feat as the current is so strong. The people in the bars throw out a rope with a plastic bottle attached, you grab on and are pulled in; making sure everyone gets off at the same bar is a challenge to say the least!! Mud bar was definitely our favourite, where mud volley ball, mud tug-o-war and of course mud wrestling takes place-check out
the photos!! This process continues for a few hours as you go from bar to bar down the river where at the end you are pulled off the river by 6-8 year old locals and you head back to the town. This is probably one of the most dangerous things that I will do on my trip but we managed 3 days of tubing without any major disasters, only minor ones and had an amazing time!!
On one of our days in Vang Vieng we took a break from the tubing and hired mopeds and went biking up to a place called the Blue Lagoon. This was an area of clear blue water, with a tree swing over the water and a really nice place to chill out and relax away from the madness of Laos. However getting there was anything but relaxing.... Louise was driving our moped and this was the first time she had ever driven one. This may have been alright if she had been on normal terrain however to get to the Blue Lagoon we were basically on mud tracks. There were potholes that the Donegal county council would be at a complete loss as
That crazy norwegian!!!
Marianne u sure that number on your hand isn't your id for the mentally insane ward?? to what to do with them!!! So you went into these unavoidable potholes with no idea how deep it was and then just had to accelerate hard to get back out! We managed though with only a few minor falls and a few scratches and bruises as we weren’t going fast at all. Funniest thing was that we actually forced a monk off his bike, it wasn’t on purpose of course, we were coming up behind him beeping the horn signalling to move over as the moped is hard enough to control on these roads and he got such a fright that he abandoned his bike and jumped into the ditch, oops that’s definitely bad karma!!
So night time Van Vieng was pretty much the same as day time but without the river, you just had the thunderstorms instead. We went from bar to bar drinking buckets and meeting new people. Laos is where we first met our mad Norwegian friends; Marianne and Ida and our class Wicklow friends; Kevin and Emma who appear on our travels quite a bit! That’s about all I can say about Laos just check out the photos to see the madness that occurred!!
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anonymous
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I love that photo of you with the buckets, so cute! And tubing seems deadly although dangerous! wow great times:))) x