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After I last wrote, we got up early in Vientiane to catch our bus to Vang Vien. The bus journey was fine and we arrived in town about 3pm - liked the look of the place immediately! We found a guest house then went for a walk around - its basically a big street with guest houses / restaurants / bars - bit magaluf really! We were about to head to an internet shop so we could track down Matt who had gone on a couple of days in front of us to meet his friend Steve when we walked past a guest house and found them outside which was a result!
We went home for a little power nap then out to meet the boys later in an Irish bar - which actually had Irish people in it which makes a change! There was a guy playing guitar and singing so we sang along and had a few drinkies. Several cocktails later we headed down to the Q bar which is where everyone ends up, and after 3 weeks of no partying or drinking Gemma and I made up for it all by dancing the night away! Well we didnt stay out too late as we had tubing the next day, but we managed to get a good few drinks inside us, have a good old dance and met a lovely Scottish couple as well.
The following day we woke up with little hang overs but headed out for a big breakfast in preparation for the all day tubing and drinking on the river! We met Matt, Steve and their dutch friend Mike at 10am and headed off to collect our tubes, where we met a lovely American called Jack who we adopted.
For those of you who have not heard of tubing before, basically you hire a huge inner tube (which once belonged to a lorry tyre) and you get in it and float down the river. All along the river are make shift bars and as you float past they throw lines out to you, if you want to stop at the bar you grab the line and get pulled in. However, when I say float down the river its not all slow and peaceful - its fecking fast and there are rapids etc. Being hauled into a bar is no easy feat! But this is what most people come to Vang Vien for.
We all got hauled in at the first bar and ordered beers (it was 10.30am) and there was a HUGE swing that everyone had a go on except me! I dont know what happened as I'm not afraid of heights or anything, I just got to the top when you launch yourself off and had a total panic attack and came down again! Such a shame but it was just too bloody scary, got some great videos of the others risking their lives though and it was a lot of fun just being a spectator!
After a couple of beers there we headed to the next bar - 3 of the boys were 'floating' in front of me and all grabbed a line but as I was the 4th and they hadnt been pulled in there was no line for me and I went whizzing past! Thought it would be a good idea to jump out of my tube and try to swim in but it was a huge mistake and the next bar threw me a line which I caught but the current dragged me off and I couldnt get back in my ring. The next bar managed to catch me though and as I climbed in a bit shaky Gemma and Matt had got off at an earlier bar and walked down along the bank to get me. As it happened the bar that had pulled me in was really good - with another swing (a bit smaller but still too high for me!) and a mud tug of war pool and mud volley ball.
I persuaded Gemma to cover herself in mud with me for a picture, although the way it smelled I'm not entirely sure it was only mud! The other boys rocked up shortly afterwards and after a few beers we attempted the mud volley ball which ended in a mud fight and a hose pipe fight, then we attempted the mud tug of war which ended up with all jumping in the mud pit! Good times. Jack must have gone on the swing 20 times, while the rest of us were supping beers he was downing the buckets of cocktails and was quite a bit ahead of us in the drunken race. He was such a great hilarious guy, the two of us sang Baby Got Back when it came on the playlist!
We went on to a couple more bars in our tubes and the most memorable one was the second to last - which had a huge slide, swing and zip wire. Honestly the health and safety people would have a fit if they saw these makeshift water slides. I had two rides on the slide and nearly lost my vest and bikini on the first go. The second one I arse flopped and was in so much pain, have a beautiful big bruise now to show for it (everyone gets some kind of war wound from tubing!). It was so much fun.
The last bar we went to was also cool, with a sling shot thing set up to shoot at cans although there were lots of chickens wandering freely around so that was a bit tempting to aim for them! This bar gave you a free joint with every bucket you bought, but as I never smoke joints at home there was no way I was going to do it here, especially as floating down a very fast flowing river in a giant rubber ring with no one to save you should anything go wrong sober was scary enough! In fact a few people lose their lives every year tubing due to the mix of drugs and alcohol on the river which is scary- you'd have to be mad to get into that state! Jack was by this point looking extremely worse for wear so the boys organised a boat to take him the rest of the way. The rest of us had a 2k float back to the end point of the river which was fun but scary. Having had a few beers by this point, the back drop of the huge lush green mountains was quite surreal, and as I was floating a little way from everyone I had a good old sing song down the last part of the river! During this part Matt was at the front of us all and Steve was at the back. Matt shouted 'One More Time!' which was what Jack kept saying all day and had us in stitches with, so then when Steve shouted it out and then from waaaaaay down the river behind us we heard it again in the distance, and all turned round to see Jack not in a boat as we'd planned but floating down behind us in his tube it absolutely cracked me up, even though I was worried about him!
When we finally finished (we'd tubed from about 10-5pm) gemma and I grabbed some dinner and decided to have a couple hours sleep as we were knackered, however when the alarm went off at 9pm for us to go meet the others we couldnt get out of bed! At 10pm Steve came and fetched us and we reluctantly got up and went out for some drinks, but we were sore and tired from the tubing and didnt manage to stay out too long before we headed home again to bed about 1am.
The following day I was rudely awoken by a giant bug crawling over my head which wasnt the best wake up call I can tell you. We went for breakfast and met Matt and Steve in a restaurant where you can lie down, which was just what we needed! Also managed to get all my photos up on Facebook which was great although they seem to be nearly impossible to download onto this website!
We had a little nap in the afternoon and headed out for a few bevvies but once again we just were not feeling it and ended up in bed earlyish - and treated ourselves to air con which was a luxury I can tell you! (Only 30 thousand kip extra!)
Woke up the next moring and packed up our stuff as we were moving on to Luang Prabang and the boys were heading south. Met for breakfast and all said good bye - hate these good byes! Gemma and I picked up a few bits that we needed (yes I now have about 20 upset tummy tablets which hopefiully will at least see us through to the weekend ha ha) then got our bus to Luang Prabang which is where we are now.
They say in Laos its almost impossible to have a bus journey which does not encounter some kind of problem. Until this point we'd had one short journey on a bus where they'd had to stop 5 mins into the journey to change the tyre and all our other bus trips had been great. However, this day was to be OUR day as about 1.5 hours away from Luang Prabang (it was 7 hour journey) there was a huge BANG which scared the absolute life out of everyone and the bus started filling up with smoke! We all rushed off and it turned out one of the tyres had blown so we had to sit in the sun and wait for them to fix it (they dont bother with the AA out here - you do everything yourself) It was a little scary as the Laos roads are so wind-y with hair pin bends which we'd stopped just after (yes I was feeling very queasy on that bus through those mountains!) but they managed to change the tyre in half an hour before any of us got hit by on coming traffic and then we were back on the road, only arriving about 45 mins later than scheduled.
That was yesterday and I'm going to save Luang Prabang for another blog as it deserves a whole one to itself, its my fave place we've been on the entire trip and I have fallen in love with it.
Tomorrow Gemma and I are going to train to be Mahouts with the elephants, ride them for an hour, give them a bath in the river and feed them. I dont think I have ever been this excited about anything in my life. Check out the next blog in a few days to see how we got on!
Love to everyone x
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