Day 1

Vang Vieng is miles apart from Luang Prabang...its really small and very touristy. Well actually Luang Prabang is touristy but in more sophisticated way. Its really pretty and kind of up market. Vang Vieng is definately catered towards the young 20 somethings who want to get pissed up. That was pretty much us at that point! We'd spent loads of time in the jungle and doing the culture thing that the time was ripe for getting smashed!

We didn't really do much on our first day, we sat in a cafe and watched Family Guy all afternoon! It was bliss! I forgot how much I loved it and hadn't watched television for what felt like ages. Vang Vieng is pretty much famous for playing endless episodes of Friends in their cafes and bars and for the legendary tubing! Tubing for those of you who don't know is where you sit in a big rubber ring or 'tube' and float down the river going from bar to bar while they oull you in and get you drunk on buckets. We were trying it out the next day - couldn't wait!

That night we went to a popular bar called Q bar but it closed at midnight because everything shuts down really early and all the hotels have curfews!

Day 2

Time for tubing! We q'd in the rain and donned our rubber rings along with what felt like the whole western tourist population of Laos and got a tuk tuk to the first bar on the river. Tubing is in a league of its own in terms of a bar crawl. Forget the Otley Run in Leeds, this is the daddy! The buckets of drink are so cheap and strong and we were so preoccupied with watching people dangling off high wires and throwing themselves off the rope swings into the river - that I almost forgot we had to get in the river at some point too! We did and it was muchus fun, we simply drifted down to the next bar where they threw a bottle attached to a rope and haul you in. This continued (which people swinging, every bar had a trappeze or zip wire) until we got to the mud bar. So named because the whole place is one big mud pit with people playing tug of war, volleyball and swiming in pits of mud - so fun! No piccies because you wouldn't take your camera in that! More buckets and Michael Jackson music (think he'd just died by this point) and off we went to the next bar where we did a zip wire and scraped our knees on rocks trying to get out of the water. You don't realise how strong the current is on the river when you're in the tube!

The last baris called Slide bar and we'd heard horror strories about a girl 3 weeks before who slid down the slide into the river, banged her head and died! Not surprising seeing as 15% of people that go tubing die! Don't know if I believe that though. Saying that we did meet a guy who had been tubing for weeks and had pins in his legs because he'd messed his leg up tubing. He was still zipping down wires though - mental. Suddenly it was night - we were suppoed to take our tubes back by 6pm but it was already 8pm so we'd lost our deposits! Ah well we were too drunk to care but kind of worried about getting back because we had to drift down the river for 40 minutes in the pitch black! People everywhere were trying to steal our tubes and telling us to float left down the river or bearright or make sure you take that turning after the bridge! What the hell??!

After an amazing save from Louise who fought some guy who was trying to steal our tube (lots of people just swim the river all the way down) we left in the darkness. We helped some stray swimmers on the way who looked as if they might drown due to lack of rubber ring and brains. By the end, a couple of hangers on turned into no less than 17 people hanging off the 3 tubes that me, Kelly and Louise had. We called ourselves the survival team. It was so dark I couldn't tell you what they looked like now!

We finnaly got back, showered and got cahnged drunk and then finished off the night in Q bar where everyone goes to wreck their heads even more. Again home by midnight but no bad to say we'd been drinking buckets of alcohol since 2pm!

Day 3

Hadn't planned on going tubing again but Louise and Kelly really wanted to so we headed down to the river again - this time without tubes. We thought we could swim the whole way and then latch onto a tube at night like people were doing to us. Hmmmm.... First bar was cool, same as before. Then we had to get into the water. A first it was fine, I was more bothered about avoiding rocks than anything else. Ummm its funny how close a bar can seem when you have a tube though, the 2nd bar felt like miles away and the current was so strong! I was passing by the bar and none of the guys throwing their bottle savers could see me! I was so worried I was going to drift past it and my arms were getting tired because I'm the worst swimmer ever! Some girl in the river managed to grab hold of a bottle and then of me - I lost a contact lens on the way but impressed everyone by keeping it on my finger the whole way and putting it back in while perched on a rock before dragging myself up!

The night came and we were yes drunk. We didn't want to run the risk of the river at night though so we were very boring and walked to a bridge where we picked up a tuk tuk. We'd seen a really drunk girl going int othe river and her mate just letting her swim - she couldn't even hold her head up she was so drunk! We went to Q bar and I had such a good night - we went onto another late bar that we didn't know exisited and the novelty of being out past midnight was so great that we stayed out till 4am! Amazing times - so glad I did tubing again that second day!

Day 4

We got the bus to Laos's capital Vientainne. We got there in about 4 hours and realised that the visa office was shut. We needed to get Thai visas for 30 days so then decided to risk it and head for the border anyway and hopefully get a 15 day visa on arrival. We were in Vientainne for about 2 hours before we were off again on about 3 different coaches, crossing the border into Thailand and then sat on an overnight train to Bangkok. Visa's my ass it was simple as to get in - at least so we thought!