Day 25: Friday 11th March (By AJ).

Vang Vieng - TUBING AND CAVES!

We had a very relaxed breakfast this morning, waffles in the courtyard! We are loving the chilled out pace of life in Laos already! We then completed the 4 hour drive to Vang Vieng, and had a quick walk around the town. We immediately fell in love with the atmosphere here, full of little wooden backpacker bars and cafes playing friends and family guy episodes on repeat! A lot of people said Laos was like Thailand 10 years ago, as it is still very undeveloped in terms of tourism.

That afternoon, we picked up our tubes and headed to the river for tubing!! TUBING WAS AMAZING!! All along the top part of the 4km river were wooden bars on stilts with slides and swings - handing out free whiskey shots! The atmosphere was buzzing, it was so packed! We spent quite a while at the bars then had to get a move on with the paddling down the last 2km, as there was a very slow current due to the dry season and we had to get back before sunset. (Paddled through a herd of cows!) It really was the best fun ever and the backdrop scenery of the mountains was stunning.

That night, we all had BBQ kebabs then headed for more whisky at the bars - had a brilliant night meeting lots of people and partying. Athough Chris and I head butted each other whilst pulling out some pretty awesome dance moves, ouch! Queue cracking headache the following morning, which I am sure had nothing to do with the whisky buckets consumed!

Day 26: Saturday 12th March.

Was woken up at 5am by a cockerel today, and then it seemed like the whole of Vang Vieng decided to have a party outside our room! We ended up giving in to the noise and headed out for breakfast at the front patio, beautiful sunshine and fantastic eggs on toast! WE LOVE LAOS!!

Chris and I hired bikes and set off to explore the caves nearby on a very bumpy off-road track. The mountain scenery was stunning and there were perfect blue skies. After following a couple of dodgy hand-painted cave signs by kids and then paying them to get into some very unofficial caves - we finally got on the right track and rode to the Blue Lagoon cave with another guy we met. The blue lagoon was absolutely beautiful with crystal clear water. It was freezing but very refreshing after the hot ride. We had our little picnic in one of the little wooden huts and then hiked up to the main cave, which was huge inside but pitch black so we were glad we had our torch!

That evening we watched the sunset over the river then had more BBQ kebabs and pancakes. We spent the evening chilling with friends watching rolling repeats of friends in a bar. :)