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Finally updating my blog! Left Vang Vieng after my originally planned 2 night stay quickly turned into a 4 nighter! We went and did the famous Mekong river tubing, where you hire an enormous inner tire tube and go by tuk tuk 3 km up river and basically spend a lazy 3hours floating back down to the town. Only catch being that the beginning of the river is lined with bars all throwing you ropes to drag you into their bar for very weird free drinks or goodies. One bar offered free shots I had to refuse as each bottle either had dead bees, a gecko or a scorpion in it...disgusting!! Then some of the bars have swings and slides you can jump into the river from but of course only after buying a drink- I've literally never seen something as dangerous as this in my life, drunk people swinging from dodgy Laos ropes into a rocky Mekong river that is so brown you can't see the fish (if there are any still alive/not eaten!). I watched from the water thinking what's the chances of me breaking something and having to get airlifted to Vientiane hospital (v.expensive). A really cool bar had a volleyball game you could join in and it was just a pit of mud, everytime you lunged for the ball you ended up in the mud!
What amazes me here is the openess of drugs everywhere, you can buy yourself a happy pizza or milkshake (magic mushrooms of course) and almost everyone knows the bars in town where to find opium! Such a crazy place, hedonist's paradise quotes the Lonely Planet and I'd have to agree. Personally for a couple of days and nights enjoying the amazing coutryside, caves and the river I think it's worth it. I loved the restaurants with their lie back cushions where you can eat for a pound and watch re-runs of friends or family guy to your hearts content.
Wouldn't be Vang Vieng without the crazy night life either. At Bucket bar you get your free bucket at a specified time and people make a bee line for the bar to start their night. With dubstep and drum and bass remixes all night it's a pretty wild night. The other place we loved was Q-bar as they had a 60s,70s,80s,90s night and played all English tunes including footage of all of us from the tubing that day.
My last full day and both Anouj and I had developed conjunctivitis from the dirty water and so many people also had it from our hostel so when they all wanted to go tubing I decided not to and went to the nearby caves with a group of people from the hostel instead. It makes me laugh here as of you can charge for something they do, it was 4,000 kip to cross the bridge, 10,000 kip to get to the caves and then once inside there's a tourguide and he expected a tip so we ended up giving him 10,000 kip too!! Get's a bit tiring after awhile.
I ended my visit in Vang Vieng to watching Egland lose to Germany 4-1, a shocking finish and a very disappointed population in town. The next morning we caught the bus to Luang Prabang.
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mum hope your conjunctivis has cleared up, not very nice in the heat I bet xx