Tubing was great fun. I'm actually kind of glad it had closed down and I didn't do it drunk because I really think I would have died. We barely managed to drag ourselves out of the rapids at the end sober, let alone drunk and some of the rocks in the river were a bit scary for my liking! It was blissful just floating down and soaking up the views!

The journey from Vang Vieng to Luang Prabang was heavenly in comparison to when we'd had to make it in a minibus on the way from Chiang Mai. We had two reclining seats each and air con. The coach may have broken down for half an hour on a scary mountain road in the scorching sun but I had a pancake with me left over from brekkie so overall, I think the journey still gets a sturdy 9 out of 10.

We went to the food alley again for dinner. You can't go wrong with a plate of food for 80p. Oh, unless you get there at 9 30 so the food is cold and no one tells you that you just ask to get it heated up, and then you proceed to tell some highly unimpressed travellers why you didn't like Vang Vieng. 'But we loved it there... There WAS alot of culture... Did you not cross the river to the lagoon???' 'No we just did tubing and went to the bars.' 'Oh' Yeh okay so we get their point- we could have tried harder to scope out the culture. But who goes to Vang Vieng for culture anyway.

Their disapproval hit us hard and lead us to begin to truly question our ways and if we should have tried harder to scope out the hidden cultural treasures of the party town... But our attention quickly turned to the joys of retail therapy at the night market!! Hehe.

I bought all my Christmas gifts to send home early... and kelly bought enough paintings to cover a school hall, spending every last kip in her little purse. 'Oh no... Soph you'll never guess what I just did...' 'You bought how many paintings?? What are you going to do with them all?' 'They were just all so nice... I think I feel sick.'

The next day we rented bicycles!! We headed away from the main town and got out of the tourist area. The river kept popping up on our left as we headed towards some mountains in the distance. We'd been on busy streets then took one right turn and suddenly seemed to be in outer Mongolia. 'I don't think we're in Kansas anymore...'

I put my camera round my neck and off we went witnessing bamboo scaffolding on a house, whole families on the back of one moped (and their guitar, of course) and gorgeous mountain views.

The road got quite hilly and it was about midday by this point... safe to say we got rather hot. 'If I sweat anymore I'm going to need to get my waterproof camera out'.

After unsuccessfully trying to find somewhere to sunbathe en route and coming across some quite unfriendly hounds we headed back to town to a much needed ice cream cafe :)