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7 hours later and THE most horrendous journey on the most rickety old local bus I've ever been on we arrived at the 'bus station' of Vangvieng. We originally weren't going to come here, as a lot of people had slated it and said it wasn't a particularly great place... soon after arriving we had no idea why people had said this. Although not a huge town, the main street was alive and restaurants busy, and there was a really laid back feel to the place, which we loved.
Vangvieng is famous for its tubing, which involves floating down one long stretch of the Mekong river on a rubber tube, and stopping along the way at the bars on the riverbank, getting drunk. This used to be a bigger craze than it is now, due to many deaths happening, so now there are only 3 bars. We thought as we were in Vangvieng, that maybe we should have a go - while in Rome and all that - however, we took a wander to one of the bars, which was a row of hammocks facing towards the river, and to use it all you had to do was buy a drink. We ended up chilling for a couple of hours there watching the world go by, and after seeing a few people float past we actually decided it looked pretty boring so stayed put!
It was pretty cool when we went for food as most of the places in Vangvieng play Friends on repeat so we were in our element haha. Early night for us as we were due to be up up and away the next morning to see the sunrise in a hot air balloon! Bit weird at first when we got picked up at half 5 and taken to the middle of a random field with some other people and it was pitch black..... soon it was light though and we were the first people to go up.
It was definitely an odd feeling when we lifted off the ground, but pretty spectacular to see the amazing scenery of Laos around us. We were glad to have gone first as the following 2 balloons went way above us at a very quick pace before going back towards the ground at the same speed, this happened twice and looked like they were about to land on someone's roof! A lovely 3 hour minivan journey then we'd be in Vientiane..
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