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Sabaidee! (Means Hello in Laos)
We arrived for the second half of our time in Laos to the small town of Vang Vieng, famous for it's tubing and epic scenery. As we checked in to our river side bungalow we saw some tubers floating past on the river... I couldn't wait to give it a try! We explored some of the town and soon noticed that a lot of the restaurants and bars have lounging areas where 'Friends' or 'The Inbetweeners' were being shown all day... and night! There were some interesting shakes (mushroom and opium are key ingredients!) on the menus but we decided against trying these. The next day we hit the tubing. This involves sitting in a tractor wheel tube whilst bobbing down stream, beer in hand. It has certainly calmed down a lot from when it was at its most popular and from what we were told, but there were still 3 bars on route and plenty of amazing rock faces overlooking the river. We stopped off at Fluid bar for a couple of beers and a short game of darts before realising it was 3pm and we weren't even half way along... oops! We continued on our journey, but not before Steve fell in backwards off of his tube ;-) , and were 'fished in' by the next bar where a lovely old Laos lady chanted 'Beer Lao'? .... yes please! We then rushed on down to the final bar before paddling frantically back to try and beat the 6pm curfew. We failed miserably (I got stuck on the shallow rocks of the river bed) and ended up losing a bit of our deposit money but was it worth it... hell yeah! We finished our evening having a great night out in the town.
After such a heavy drinking day and night on the river, we spent the whole of the next day recovering... or in Steve's case getting back on it, whilst watching Friends in one of the many restaurants. By the following day we were feeling more revived so took a tuk tuk to a nearby 'Blue Lagoon' and cave. After being very spoilt by the waterfall in Luang Prabang we felt a little let down by this although it was a lovely blue/green colour with many people swinging in. We climbed up a very precarious rock stairway to look around the cave before calling it a day. We spent that evening chilling whilst I kicked Steve's butt at Connect 4.
By our final day we were partied out and took the bus to our next and final Laos stop, the capital, Vientiane. We arrived on a Friday and frantically rushed to get to the Thai embassy for our visa application but they were already closed and would be for the weekend. D'oh! We settled ourselves to the fact we would spend a weekend exploring and headed back to the town. We spent the next day exploring a local Wat and then enjoyed the lovely air conditioned mall nearby. Next to the mall was a market, albeit slightly warmer temperature, but we headed in and I was thrilled when Steve spotted a MASSIVE bulldog After very little persuasion I went over for a cuddle and introduction. His name was Georgie and he was so big he was actually on a table with wheels, I guess so they could pull him along?! He shouldn't have been in such a hot place but he seemed happy enough. I feel we connected In the evening we went to a local rock festival called Vienstock at a nearby International School. We were lucky it was on the weekend we were there and we listened to many interesting cover songs whilst enjoying more Beerlao.
The Sunday we spent mooching and I was very excited to see the start of the Formula 1 season... even if it was commentary in Laos!
Monday saw us back at the embassy bright and early to submit our visa applications, a very long process in the heat but 2 hours later we were free to explore again so embarked on an epic walk to visit Pha That Luang and Putaxai (monuments famous for Vientiane). After this we went for a lovely meal of typical Laos cuisine and very garlicy! Considering we were told Laos doesn't have much to offer food wise, we are inclined to disagree.
Tuesday we had a bit of a nightmare trying to sort transport to Thailand but eventually found a VIP sleeper bus available so rushed to the embassy to collect our visas... only another hour wait in the scorching heat and then off we headed to our final country... on the BEST bus ever!
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