...What better way to start a new chapter in the travelling journal than with a 27 hour bus journey, stopping regularly to load up with "extras"! By this I mean a large collection of Lacoste polo shirts coming through the window and hidden underneath the back seats, a huge quantity of mattresses strapped on top, plus cooking equipment inside, chickens, stowaways with no seats and a few boxes of "lemon"- no one worked out what exactly was in those but whatever it was, we know the flavour! The western travellers stuck together, there was a Canadian girl, a South African guy, and two boys from Birmingham, plus us going all the way. Everyone was travelling to Luang Prabang in the north, and Ben and I to Vang Vieng, 4 hours south, although when I asked the driver, he had no knowledge of our destination. The same had happened at the bus station to start with, so we agreed that if we ended up being dropped of with the other guys it was no problem, everyone was getting on well and it became like a little family. Actually crossing the Vietnam boarder was a long process, and after three hours of helping each other with forms and payments, plus everyone avoiding the one and only toilet which was straight out of a horror film, we were back on the bus and off again, this time driving through Laos. We stopped for breakfast but as Laos has a closed currency, Kip, and the town had no ATM's no one could eat! A big shout out to my good friend Ashley Bangs and little Lozza here for my kind birthday gift of Thai Baht which they widely accept here, it really was our saving grace and we all had an interesting feast of sticky rice, pork and shredded crab!

Also, it turned out our destination was on the list, but we had now decided we didn't want to stop there so we could travel on with our new pals, it got a bit hairy with the driver but nothing $10 couldn't fix. When we finally arrived it was dark and took a gruelling hour lugging around our stuff to find a guesthouse at a good price, and even then it had a smelly bathroom. We had a quick curry for dinner but there is an 11.30 curfew there, so we passed out straight after with big plans for the following day.

Our 9 am start started with chartering a mini van to Tat Kuang Si, a beautiful multi-tiered waterfall of cool turquoise pools, which also had a few enclosures for bears rescued from poachers which was nice to see in a developing country, and the waterfall was really impressive even though it is the dry season here. We climbed to the top so we could look down on it from above. After a very sweaty decent, we had dips in the pools, and Ben had a splash on the rope swing.

We headed back to see some local temples, where they have a terrible tradition of selling little birds in tiny wicker baskets. There is two in each one and they are literally on top of each other, the idea is you let them free at the top, I couldn't understand how Buddhism would agree with this type of thing, as it is abstract to their principles, so I questioned a monk on it who said he wasn't aware of it and he would stop it, apparently. It was a great view of the town when we were 190 steps up at the top of Phu Si although it started raining so we ended up sheltering for the rest of the afternoon in a local bar, before trying another local tradition, bowling! It's the way both the locals and tourists get past the curfew, the bowling alleys are just out of town and you can drink and party all through the night. We had a few games, a few bottles of whiskey, a few hundred plays of "Gangnam Style" and finally dragged some of the more drunk members home at about 2.30. I was also woken up again at 4 with a bed full of ants which was really a highlight as Ben and I had the pleasure of another early start and travelling all day to Vang Vieng on the gravelly, potholed roads, although when we arrived we instantly found a really luxurious and comfortable room for the equivalent of £5!

We rented some mountain bikes the next day to explore the area, we rode out to a cave then another, although this was a scary cave! Armed with just one head torch supplied at the entrance we were pointed in the right direction and told there was pools to swim in at the end. It was pitch black and narrow with some really strange bugs, and some really rickety ladders up and down guiding us to the end pools, but when we got there we decided not to get in anyway, they were pretty murky and I didn't want to find out what else could be living in there! The whole experience put us off caving for a bit so we relaxed overlooking the Nam Song river in a few bars with endless repeats of Friends, Family Guy and Beer Lao.

Next on the agenda was some rock climbing, which was really fun and Ben was a natural, at the end his arms looked like they were going to burst! It was a really good workout, and we spent the afternoon tubing, which is floating down the river in a big tractor tire inner tube, the town was famous for it and the river was lined with funky bars which have recently been closed down by the Laos government due to drownings, and worse. It was sad how fun it could have been, the scenery was great but its really not that fun at all anymore, even as we watched the sun in fall bellow the rainforest. I spoke to a lot of locals as I was feeling like the town must be struggling with all the lost tourism, and I was thinking with tighter controls they could bring it back, but the general consensus really was that the town was better off without the half naked, loud, smashed westerners, so I'm not going to stick around and campaign for it! We were soaked through and both smelt like river, so we took ourselves back to the wonderful comfort of our room, had hot showers and gorged on amazing local food from the night market, crispy pork ribs, sticky rice lollypops, tangy salad and candy floss, ready for the next early morning excursion, kayaking to Vientiane.