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Week Four - Laos, death by tubing and a sleeper train to Bangkok
For a change, when recovering after a big night out, we slept most of the day and chilled out at our hostel. We decided to head out at about 5pm to grab some food early doors, have a shop on the night market and meet up with 'The Posh Boys' Sam and Josh. We met them the previous night, they were geeky, charming, hilarious and very posh (in comparison to us anyway!). We had a nice chilled night at Utopia and booked to go to Vang Vieng together the following day.
It's such a strange situation when you're travelling, in reality back home, you would never meet someone for a couple of hours, arrange to meet them the following day and then book a trip with them for the day after that! I think we need that though, if you meet people you get on with why not experience amazing things together. I'm starting to think that if it was this easy back home and nobody overthought things like they did, that people would be a lot happier and would most probably be surrounded by lots of amazing friends and fall in love quickly without any complications. The 'VIP' bus we boarded the following day was ok, just ok. It included a food stop around lunch time and a free bottle of water. I would say, calling this the 'VIP' bus was slightly exaggerating! We arrived and stayed at a place called ?, our main attraction to Vang Vieng was Tubing. It had been reduced dramatically over recent years due to deaths in tourists. You basically sit in a rubber dingy, get dragged down the River Meakon by the current and have ropes threw over to u so you can be pulled to shore and have a drink in the bar. There were now only 3 bars and I'm pretty sure there used to be 27!
That night we went out to explore, the place was small but the nightlife was really good and the drinks were cheap! We ordered a couple of spirit mixers with free promo vest tops! "Who's your Paddy?", I suppose you can guess it was an Irish Bar.
The next day we set out for tubing, renting a water proof bag so everyone's stuff would keep dry whilst we bobbed along the river! We arrived, rubber dingys in tow, at the first bar. There were reps, lots of drinking games, the sun was shining and everyone was ready to party. After about an hour, everyone hopped onto their dingys for the first drift down the river, it was pretty nerve wracking, there was obviously no life guards or even people looking over what was happening, with drinks being plied down everyone's necks at each bar I could see why there had been previous accidents! Regardless of the dangers though, it was pretty blissful drifting down the river in the sun, and also pretty hilarious. The second bar had mud volley ball, everyone rolled around in the mud, played volley ball and mud wrestled. The third and final bar had a basket ball court, dance floor and a chill out area. Everyone continued to dance and drink, I was moaning that the water proof bag was pretty heavy so we opened it up to find it was full of water! Everyone's money was soaked, and unfortunately so was Josh's iphone. There was nothing we could do to save it, not even the bowl of rice we used in attempt to pull the water from the iphone.
It started to get dark and with dingys look scarce we decided to head back, there was no instruction as to where to get off so we just thought we would eventually come to an ending, or there would at least be signs of how long we had left on the river. Naturally, as dusk was setting in the current picked up. It was beautiful, surrounded by mountains with a perfect grey sky. After about 15 mins of being on the river we all got slightly nervous, still not one other person in sight, and dark surrounding us, we wondered how the hell we was going to get out of this river. We nervously made jokes and laughed but we all knew we were pretty scared. It got worse, the current pulling us down to the point where we couldn't even put our feet down to keep us in one place, we decided to try and get to the shore and just get out wherever we could. The rocks on the bottom of the river were sharp on our feet but at this stage, we felt we had no other option. Josh made it out first, Sam and I managed to secure ourselves but couldn't make it to the shore whilst Alex was still drifting down stream closely out of sight and so I insisted Sam let me go so I could find her. Josh went out to pull Alex in, the worlds worst waterproof bag had gotten wrapped around Alex's neck and was pulling her down stream. Josh managed to get her out and so me and Sam clambered over the rocks and made it to the shore. We were all shook up, spoke little and got a tuktuk and went home. We decided on a quiet one that night following the ordeal and so we all went for a nice meal.
The following day we left for Vientiene, we only wanted a night here as it was a city and we was actually only heading there as it was easier to go from there to Bangkok. We got dropped off in the centre and stayed on the second guesthouse we came across, ? Guesthouse. It was the worst. Do not ever stay there. There were bed bugs and I genuinely think the sheets were a few months off from being changed, the whole place just had a real bad mucky feeling!
That night, not wanting to go too hard, we went out for a few quiet drinks and came across a locally popular live band pub called Wind West. We loved it. The phillipeno band were really good ad the locals loved it. We headed off home, for an uncomfortable night and looked forward to heading to Bangkok the following day.
We all woke up a little Mardy from the s***ty guesthouse and our lack of sleep so after spending a lot of time together we decided to have a morning apart. The boys went one way and us the other to have breakfast and a walk around until the transfer came to pick us up. Alex and I went to a coffee shop and decided to be practical and book our flights from Bangkok to Phuket aswell as set up our crouch surfing page for when we hit Australia. The posh boys ended up in the same cafe as us, total coincidence (so they said).
The transfer picked us up, we got one train into Thailand, which only took 15 minutes, we then got on the sleeper train to Bangkok. The sleeper bus was very clean and comfy, the set up was very clever, a guy came round and whipped the two chairs and table into bunk beds. We played a few games of cards then I watched a film called 'On The Road' with Sam. It was about a group of authors and their paths separately and together. I really enjoyed it, I'm now on the search for the book to read on my travels.
We arrived in Bangkok at about 7am. We were departing from the boys as we were heading just 5 mins from the popular spot of Ko San Road and they were checking themselves into a nice 'posh' hotel just out of the madness. We were most likely going to see them at the airport the following day as we were all on the same flight to Phuket.
We pre-booked to stay at a hostel called Overstay, online it looked very artsy fartsy with well done graffiti decorating the whole hostel and seemed to have a nice chill out vibe to it. It was a good place to stay for our 1 night brief trip. When we arrived there were bottles of alcohol outside and a few people passed out, we were met by a guy and a can a nitrogen bouncing up and down asking us if we wanted a balloon. We declined. If he caught us at a later time, we would of jumped at the chance of a free balIoon. I didn't get his name because it didn't take me very long to tell him to "f*** off". He was way too annoying for this time in the morning after that journey. Alex and I already knew we didn't want to stay here but were exhausted so decided to jump in a dorm bed for a few hours until our double room became available. As we were shown upstairs we were in utter shock. The place was vile (and any other distasteful word for that matter). I can only describe it as a Crack den. After an hour or two we woke up and was shown to the double room. It confirmed that the place more or less was, a Crack den with possible aex trafficking tendencies. We jumped ship sharpish onto the next bus to Ko San Road. On our depart from the 5 star squat, we ran into Pablo, one of the Backpackers crew from Hoi An. We all went for breakfast on Ko San Road and we found a nice little guesthouse called ? to stay at.
The guesthouse was nice, clean with good washing facilities. The fact that it had a warm shower instantly made it the best place we had stayed so far. You see, you never feel quite clean whilst travelling in Asia, a quick freezing cold shower never does quite hit the spot! We grabbed our wifi fix, this happened for a good hour everytime we arrived at our new digs, we drooled at the guy on the floor below, showered and headed out.
It was crazy! People everywhere, lots of shopping stalls, food stalls and locals making noises at you advertising the ping pong show (I'm sure you can imagine what that entails). So far I hadn't been a fan of the city's in Asia but I really liked it here and was happy to know we would be returning to round off our trip in Asia in a couple of weeks.
We grabbed some food, had a wonder around some tattoo shops (we decided we was going to get one whilst away) and headed to some bars for some drinks. We were kindly asked to sit down by two local girls Sai and ?. They were a similar age to us and Sai studied English at University so was keen to talk to us. We swapped cultural questions and gossiped a lot about boys. It was great to have a chat with them and we were sad to leave them a few hours later knowing we had a flight to catch the following morning.
In Asia, it is always a task to find a taxi in your budget, or one that wasn't going to rip you. It's a set unknown travelling rule that you ask at least three taxi drivers for a price to your chosen destination and then barter them off each other before you actually get in any taxi. We managed to get a good deal in the first taxi we approached and so we headed off to the airport. It's all pretty easy at Asian airports and you can check in and be on board within about 30 minutes. We were hungry and tired and so we treated ourselves to a Mcdonalds breakfast with extra hash brown of course. It was bliss. We bumped into The Posh Boys in the departure lounge and boarded the plane. Within seconds we were asleep, we even missed the health and safety information from the flight attendants and the next minute we were in Phuket. We were obviously very tired and most likely in a McDonalds like food coma!
We got in a taxi and head for Central Backpackers, it was soon to become our favourite hostel yet. It was just a few minute walk from the strip, had a delightful women called Mama working there who made everyone feel great, a nice chill out area where they put films in the day and nice clean rooms. We checked in with The Posh Boys but stayed in a different room to them.
That night we planned to join in down at the communal area, get alcohol from the shop and all drink together then head out. Sitting with The Posh Boys, we all facetime'd our parents. It was so nice to see my dad's face, I miss him so much. We had a natter and said Goodbye, The Posh Boys thought I was pretty hard faced and so couldn't believe it when I cried after I said bye to Dad. I was seriously missing him.
We headed over to the shop for a bottle of Hong Thong and Coke. Hong Thong was cheap whiskey that got you very drunk, very quick. Sam was steaming, he was hilariously drunk. How he made it out I will never know. The strip was crazy, every bar was opened up onto the street with
strippers and pole dancers right in your face, bright lights and super loud music. It didn't look like there was going to be a music curfew here! It was like something out of a 'Hangover' film. We partied till the early hours, taking photos with a strippers and admiring how hot the ladyboys were! I couldn't work out if the ladyboys here become ladyboys for a better way of life rather then an actual gender issue. They were popular, made a lot of money and had great fake boobs.
We wasted most of the morning in bed feeling terrible, the boys were leaving that morning for Phi Phi island, how they made it I will never know. I did hear that a bottle of Hong Thong helped them on their journey though! That day, when relaxing in the communal area we met 2 Irish girls. Karen and Emma. They were lovely. We got along great and so decided to hit the strip with each other for our last night in Phuket. We had all booked to go to Phi Phi Island the next day. Alex was feeling a little ropey so stayed in whilst I headed out with our new friends. We went to a club which was actually pretty good, the dj played good music but was so bad at mixing the songs. Everyone stood for a good 30 seconds in silence between each song, it was a 'Girls did get in for free' club though so we couldn't complain to much. We danced, watched and laughed at the majority of male travellers bagging themselves one of the Asian prostitutes that sat round the 'Prostitute table'. We decided to cut our night sensibly short to make it a little easier for us to get up in time ready for our ferry to Phi Phi in the morning. I had heard wonderful things about Phi Phi and I couldn't wait to get there!
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