Vang Vieng - The home of 'Tubing'...for those who are unaware of what 'tubing' is I shall explain.

The ingredients are simple, one river, 21 bars (dotted along this river), inflated tractor inner tubes and lots of westerners. After a short tuk tuk ride from town you arrive. The idea is you start at 'bar 1', have a beer or bucket (like one you would take to the seaside, but this time filled with alcohol, not sand) and then float down the river, on your hired inner tube to the next bar ('bar 2'). Repeat this process as many times as you like (up to 21 times) or until you have had enough. If this makes no sense, have a look on Google - im not sure what the results will be as I havent actually done this, but you should get the idea. Anyway, sound like fun?...it was!

Me and Belle however decided not to hire tubes (like the majority of people 'tubing') as they are quite expensive and have restrictions on what time you need to return them (back in town) etc. Also some people, when they have had one bucket too many, steal other peoples tubes which results in handing over more money, if they are not found / returned. So we joined the masses and walked from bar to bar, with me swimming on one occasion.

We started at 'bar 1' (we thought this was the obvious place to start) with some people we had met on our Halong Bay trip and a Danish guy, Jonas, who we had met several times on our travels. We made our way through the bars, until 'bar 6' (which anyone rarely bothers going past if on foot), soaked up the atmosphere (and beer / buckets), played some 'beer pong' (again please refer to Google) and then headed back to town. Once in town you either headed to a bar or have something to eat and turn in. We did a mix and repeated this process three times.

When not tubing there isn't much to do in Vang Vieng. It's a small town, surrounded by great scenery and mountains with a large amount of bars, cafes and hostels, all of which show episodes of either Family Guy or Friends, all day, everyday.

In total we were in Vang Vieng for a week, this wasn't our initial plan, but we needed an extended Thai visa so we had to wait 3 days for that to arrive. When not tubing we made use of the cafes, episodes of comedy and generally relaxing.

We both felt a bit sorry for Vang Vieng, if you took time to look around you would notice how scenic the place was. We therefore decided we were going to hire a motorbike one day and explore some of the views Vang Vieng had on offer.

The night before we met Jonas for something to eat and a beer in one of the bars. When there, we discovered the bar hosted nightly 'killer pool' (you guessed it...google please) competions, which if you came 1st, 2nd or 3rd, you could win free beer, or alcohol of some sort. Belle, Jonas and myself all entered, I came second. My wondeful prize was a bottle of local Laos vodka, mmmm.

We sat staring at this bottle for about an hour or so wondering what to do with it. We didnt really want to carry it round whilst on our travels, but didn't want to drink it as our day of exploring on two wheels awaited. We cracked, we grabbed some coke and opened the bottle. Laos vodka, not pleasant, it tastes alot more like whiskey than vodka, however when in Rome....

The following day I was greeted by a headache. This was meant to be our day of appreciating Loas, not a day of feeling fragile, however to our delight mother nature had intervened. During the night there was a big storm and the rain continued thought the morning, we called off the bike trip. The roads looked bad enough when dry, let alone after torrential rain.

So that was Vang Vieng, we never actually managed to explore the surrounding area but we did do what we and everyone else stops in Vang Vieng for, tubing.

We collected our Visa's and then boarded another mini bus towards our next destination, Luang Prubang.