Vang Vieng to Luang Prabang...

Day two of the vang vieng tubing experience began in much the same fashion as the first. Heading out into the ghost town that is vang vieng before 11am in the morning you could have heard a pin drop as the previous nights exploits take their toll on the temporary population. The town itself is ok, it's relatively compact and filled to the brim with only two kinds of establishments, shops selling the obligatory vang-vieng merchandise (vests, fake ray bans etc) and bar-come restaurants. In fact these places are famous in their own right due to an odd insistence for playing either friends or family guy non-stop, 24 hours a day, all on big screens. We aren't just talking about a couple of bars here, we are talking about possibly fifty of them, all next to each other essentially providing the same freakish service. Thing is, along with exactly the same menus, are catering, in their eyes anyway, for what westerners are used to back home. It's a strange proposition that these people think that all we do back home is watch cartoons and eat cheese toasties.

Anyway, as we prepared to head down for more tubing fun it started to dawn on me, with a little help from mum, just how much my brother Ady would have loved this kind of thing. You could just imagine him now, hands flayling, head stuck in one of the whisky buckets, dancing like he'd put his hands and feet in a campfire and was trying to cool them down. I think in a way he was there, he must have been to see me struggling to get to grips with quite possibly the worst music and worlds thickest people all in one spot. You see I'm trying not to be one of those bitter snobs stood on the sidelines, we actually met some top people on both days, but it's hard to imagine how some of these lads got here if they have the inability to produce speech. Anyway, despite some initial sadness we attempted to lift ourselves by ordering a 'bucket' of gin and tonic. A classy green bucket full of half a bottle of gin and seemingly, nothing much else, after we gave ady a good old toast the bucket, in about thirty minutes, was gone. As the day progressed and as we loosened up both the people and the music started to become intoxicating. After a blur of five hours dancing on a bamboo dancefloor, almost in the middle of the jungle, we found ourselves in the back of a tuk-tuk with two other Aussies sat discussing our impressive moustaches in aid of Movember, to promote testicular cancer awareness. Shell, alas, had shaved hers off just a couple of days before...

Back in town we drank a couple more beers before eating something (we don't really have any recollection of what it was) before heading back to our room to try and sleep before our seven hour journey up over the mountains towards luang prabang, in the morning.

For some reason, unbeknown to us really, we felt quite apprehensive about coming to vang vieng. We'd heard all the stories and read everything about it before we came so I don't know whether we thought we were too old, wouldn't enjoy it being in a couple or just wasn't our scene. In the end we had a great time. You can see why some people despise it though. You couldn't be further away from Laos if you tried, but for a couple of days it's fine. Besides, when would you be able to ride a tractor inner tube Down a river whilst having whiskey poured into your mouth again? Vang vieng itself has somehow managed to be transformed into some kind of inland magaluf, but with even more mentalists. You have to feel for the locals but by speaking to a few the influx of farang has brought with it great wealth. Read a bit further and you find the town completely unified in how it's all run, by combining all tubing profits into large cartel type organisation. Which in itself, is kind of refreshing. Compared to something like halong bay in Vietnam which has at least a hundred operators all working the route at the same time, destroying any sense of being somewhere far removed.

In the morning we packed in preparation for another bus journey. This time to the UNESCO listed city of luang prabang, 160kms to the north. To get there we would have to drive along, apparently, one of the most beautiful and dramatic roads not just in Laos but anywhere in the world. They would not by lying.

As we headed north out of vang vieng the road continued to wind itself up into the lush green mountains, passing small bamboo houses every now and again that seemed to be held up by nothing more than small twigs that supported the whole structure from falling 1000 feet below. The scenery was, even this early on, quite spectacular. After stopping briefly so the driver could eat we were on our way once more convinced that we had probably gone about half way. Oh how wrong two people can be. The journey was epic, in every way. For eight hours the poor bus wound up and over mountains as large as Ben Nevis but along roads that if were a dog, would be one of those vicious strays with bits of fur and skin missing. As soon as you think you are maybe just a few miles away, because your at the bottom of another valley, the bus begins it's long and arduous journey back over the mountain, all to the collective sighs of the people on the bus.

After seven long and ultimately frustrating hours we arrived in luang prabang in the dark and jumped onto one of the waiting tuk-tuks to take us to our hotel.

We are looking forward to the next few days and what this supposedly beautiful town has to offer. We have also decided to splash out and buy a couple of plane tickets to chiang Mai and the start of our thai adventure.

Mucho lovo, Tommo xxxx

Tubing in Vang Vieng...

After a long and bumpy journey from Vientiane (Shell went green at one point) we touched down in Vang Vieng, apprehensive about what the following days may bring in this part of the world. Strangely, even though we are still firmly in our twenties, doing some of the things that people get up to in Vang Vieng just seemed completely beyond us, I think mainly because we come as a couple but also because we aren't eighteen and on a 'gap year man' from University. You get a lot of these. In reality, we should never have worried, maybe misplaced apprehension?

Arriving in Vang Vieng, we were almost immediately steered towards accommodation in the centre of town that despite the risk of being criminally noisy throughout the night would set us back no more than £5 per night. After getting grips with the town we spent the first of our days indoors as I unfortunately regained a similar stomach bug that I first encountered in Bali, falling just short of the 'Shell, am I going to die' feeling that I had two months ago! This time, the constant diarrhea would just mean that a day spent in our hotel room watching HBO for 13 hours straight would just give us an excuse to watch seven movies back to back (Mean Machine, Red, Trading Places, The Invention of lying, Extraordinary Measures, You Don't know Jack and Four Christmases!), much needed after nearly three weeks of being constantly on the move.

The next day we rose early enough and headed straight out for breakfast before paying our money for a our tubes before heading, with four guys from Tasmania, down to the start of the Tubing bar mile! As you stroll across the flimsy wooden bridge to the first bar you instantly get the feeling that this is something slightly more manic than even Friday night along Albert Road in Southsea. True, the predictable but inaudible sound of the local mush isn't found but is replaced by the incoherent screams of a group of girls all vying to bounce their ping pong ball in a glass of beer placed on the next table (it's not what you think). This 'bar' on the side of the river, was packed to the rafters with people playing drinking games, necking whiskey, jumping up and down to trance music and generally enjoying the free alcohol and sun mixture. We bought our first beers, sat down on one of the bamboo rafts that double for dancing podiums and started to take in our first experience of Vang Vieng's famous Tubing. You couldn't help but be sucked in.

You see, all you want to do in these situations is completely let go, and this you do, that's why you spend the day drinking, dancing and meeting the kind of people you only used to see on 'Ibiza Uncovered'. The thing is though, however much you try to fight it, you can't help but see things from a sociological perspective, to sit there, beer in hand, watching these people of maybe thirty different nationalities having the time of their lives. Although mainly alcohol induced, these people all respond to each other and their surroundings in such different ways. It's great to watch and even better to be a part of as you sit their in the scorching sun, surrounded by verdant forest, dramatic karsts and raised bamboo dancefloors populated by people of all ages gyrating to New York techno. In a way, it's hard to imagine a more surreal sight, try to remember the helicopter scene in Apocolypse Now with Marlon Brando and you'll have some idea.

Although firmly entrenched as part of the South-East-Asia backpacker rights-of-passage, it nevertheless conjours up images of mystical hedonism in it's purest form, maybe somewhere Indiana Jones would find at the bottom of steep ravine only for it to be populated by four guys from Coventry wearing fluorescent paint, on their nipples. It's a strange one, something that if your not fully prepared for, can in some ways intimidate. In other respects though, as long as you take it all with a firm pinch of salt, can be one of the last vestiges of pure, unadulterated hedonism that if were placed in the UK, maybe somewhere downstream on the Thames, would be closed down in about, well, four and a half minutes.

Jumping on the tube we sailed downstream for all of twenty-five seconds before a plastic bottle tied to a massive length of rope came hurtling towards us so we could grasp hold and be winched in to the next bar. This one called, synonymously, the Bucket Bar. After being 'made' to down shots of whiskey by a couple of guys we were then told to tie headbands around our head which we duly stuck on without noticing what was written on them. Sorry mum and sorry Linda but mine read 'I got fucked in the Bucket Bar for 10,000 kip' and Shells' read 'I got fucked by Justin Bieber.....in the Bucket Bar', classy...

In the end we stayed in there for most of the afternoon, watching the loons dive off a bamboo tower into the river below, intermittently being made to down some whiskey and then hopping off to play volleyball on a batch of sand after being rounded up by a crazy Canadian girl (pesky Canadians) who insisted on calling everyone by the country they were from (she hated first names apparently). God help the guy from The Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia....

Anyway back on the river we bobbed around for a while before passing various other bars before deciding as we had no clue of the time we would ride the current all the way back into town where we would hand back our tubes to collect our deposits. On the way back to the hotel we popped into a bar for food where, as a ferocious storm rolled in, the opening of The Smiths 'There is a Light that Never Goes Out' came through the speakers. I know it's tourists a town but sat here, in a bar in the middle of Laos, after a day spent drinking whiskey in the sun, watching lightning bright up the night sky, and without trying to sound like Pop Larkin... things just couldn't be any more perfict....

So Laos then....

Amazingly, after the previous days hellish travel we actually had a great nights keep despite sleeping in a bungalow with a tin roof. We woke up feeling much more refreshed and so after chilling out on the two hammocks on the porch for an hour, we went off in search of the small harbour where a boat would take us back over to the mainland so we could catch a bus up to pakse. On the boat we sat with two lads who we had met in china and along with the two young Canadian girls, formed a good little group for our onwards trip. At the bus station we were once again hoarded into a van which was such a tight squeeze with everyone inside that poor shell had to sit on the wheel arch, I did swap with her after it started to burn her bum though! A few minutes earlier we had paid an extra 20 dollars each for a night bus journey to take us onwards to Vientiane meaning we should have around 6 hours in Pakse before moving on yet again.

After three hours the van pulled into pakse but we felt instantly that things seemed a tad strange. Four guys who were apparently on the night bus too were dropped off first but the driver took us on and dropped us outside a restaurant in the middle of town. Upon arriving, a girl who we think was the contact for the company told us, no jokes here, that our night bus had crashed during the night and that her husband, presumably the driver, had been taken away early in the morning by the police. All of this, after being scammed, conned and laughed at for the past few days nearly pushed us over the edge. The four of us stood there demanding answers from anyone who we could collar before the driver of the minivan made a call and we were picked up to leave for yet another location, this time the bus station. After being led around on amerry old goose chase for two days we were then miraculously presented with two tickets, both with bed numbers, things were looking up just to make things even better, a large green night bus with the letters VIP were inscribed on the side! We felt ecstatic.

Leaving at 8pm the bus was unlike the others we had been on so far in the trip. It only had two rows of beds which were themselves doubles. We settled down, watched a film on the laptop, ate crisps, it was bliss! Thing is though, when it came to sleeping it was impossible. The double shocker of poor Laos roads and a girlfriend who spends the whole night shuffling around meant that as we pulled into Vientiane at 6am, neither of us had had a second of sleep. not a sausage.

As the bus piled onto a giant tuk-tuk we were taken to the centre where half the bus got off and went straight on to vang vieng, a place further north, without actually seeing anything here in Vientiane, the Laos capital.

Whether there was anything to see in Vientiane was a different matter. For us, tiredness had completely overcome us so we sat down, had some breakfast ( unbelievable coffee and croissant's in vientiane, another French gift to the region). I then left shell to go and find is a room and after an hour or so had found us the last room in a cheap hotel. Dumping our bags we went off into the city to explore, noting almost instantly that for a capital city, this place us as mellow as mellow gets...

We saw various ornate monasteries and a replica of the arc d'triomphe that was both impressive and hideous. It is almost an exact replica of the one in Paris but has distinct griminess about it that makes unmistakably Asian. It also has an inscription on the side of it in both Lao and English which read something like, 'this concrete was donated by the Americans to build an airport runway, we decided to build the arc d'triumpth instead. We know it's awful, you know it's awful but let's forget all that and focus on the view from the top'. It's something we are definitely picking up in Laos, just how mellow and self deprecating they can be.

Anyway for the rest of the day we sat around in some of hundreds of coffee shops and ate cake, thinking about how we are going to get to Thailand, our choices are another 24 hour journey by bus and van or an expensive but short 1 hour flight to chiang mai. Decisions decisions,

That night we booked onwards tickets to vang vieng, a 'backpackers' enclave famed for it's 'tubing', riding an inflated tractor inner tube 4 kms down a river lined with a shocking array of bars and dancing youngsters on bamboo dance floors. Although we are keen to check it out I've got to be honest here (even to myself) that this just isn't me. I don't think shells too up for it either. It's supposedly one of those places you will either love or absolutely despise. Vang vieng itself, or at least the surroundings, look beautiful. Which is why we may just book a room away from the carnage and take time to relax after being constantly on the move now for nearly three weeks.

But hey, we haven't been to vang vieng yet so we will make our minds up when we get there, you never know, we could be downing shots on a riverbank with the mushties before you know it!

Much love, Tommo xxxx