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we arrived in laos' sticky capital, vientiene. it was only a five minute walk from where we had to pay our driver to our hotel down the road. this five minutes felt like an eternity from the heat so we were glad to just jump in the first hotel we could find and have a nice cold shower.
there wasnt much to do in vientiene apart from sit by the river front relax and saip some ice cold 20p drinks made from fresh fruit! that night we went to the river front venders that had a menu so eating cheap we sat down and endulged in some local delacacies. josh had laab (larp) and i had what was suposed to be garlic chicken. i was quite mistaken i couldnt taste any garlic but just hundreds of chopped chillis nicely mixed in with the hottest chicken i have ever eaten. it was so hot my eyes watered and my mouth salvated for about an hour after finishing my meal! a vindaloo never seemed so tempting!
after a couple of days being bored we made our way up north to a place called vang vieng. its famous amongst travelers for tubing (.pron. verb a drunken sport that involves drinking your body weight in alcohol and progressing 8km down river via numerous bars with extremly high rope swings!) if you want to see what its like type "vang vieng rope swing" into youtube! its crazy!
vang vieng is probably the freindliest place we've visited so far all there are is hundreds of expats that own bars and hostels. down the main street in vang vieng there are about 10 resteraunts that play freinds repeats over and over it sounds sad but its really addictive seeing a program from home. you'll end up sitting watching a whole series of freinds in one go and spend next to nothing on beer and fruit shakes!
we bought a tour that basically revolved around the mekong we started off just getting in a tube about 8km up the river and venturing into a cave that takes you 1km under rock and into the blackness of the cave. after swiming back thorught the other way we got out to have some food and to dry off.
after drying off we walked back to the tuk tuk it took us 1.5km down river to where we would kayak to a couple of bars and finnish.
after negotiating numerous rapids with josh (not the most abled paddler) we got to our first bar which had a small jump but boys being boys none of us wanted to spend precious drinking time at a platform with no bar and just jump off so we decided to head further down stream to a big bar where locals go and expats alike. we stopped off and paddled to the side, gathered our money and bought a couple of cheap beers. after a few we decided to make the big jump, which involved swinging about 7m into the air on a rope swing and letting go. we all managed to pluck up the courage to swing and our tour guide went first. obviously he was good, he goes there every day probably everyday of the week and manages to pull off one handed swing folowed by hanging by his feet then a summer sault to top his go off! josh was next and he decided to try the same. however joshs creativity sometimes exceeds his gracefulness. he swing out on the first swing and lets go midflight he trys to spin but he cant manage to turn himself over so he starts kicking his feet and flailing his arms to right the situation, but to no avail so he ends up landing a 7m drop flat on his back! the bar was full and about 200+ people were watching after the guide did his stuff and sees josh pull off the biggest back flop ever. seriously ive never heard quite like this. after his head came out of the water there was the biggest roar of cheering as he swam to the side.
that was the main part of the tour for that day so im going to cut it short.
the next day we sat in a freinds bar and waited to be picket up to travel into thailand to start our tresures of the north trip.
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