From the service station in Thailand, we waited a little longer until we got on another bus, to the Thai/Laos border. Here, we got off and had our passports checked. Then we got back on the bus, drove for ten minutes, then got off again to pay for our visas. We waited here a while then got on another packed out bus and drove for a short while. We were taken off this bus and just left on a side street where we waited for two hours! Like usual, we had no idea what was going on for most of it, until another bus turned up to drop off more people and said we would be waiting another forty five minutes.
This turned up eventually and we got taken the four hour journey to Vang Vieng. Laos is a very green and pretty country but you can tell it isn't as affluent as Thailand by seeing the way people were living as we drove through. Plus the roads seem to be tarmac for 100 meters, followed by 100 meters of stones and sand, which, every time the bus went over it, it sounded and felt like an airplane landing! This got quite annoying after four hours!
From the bus station we then were put in another bus to drive us across some disused land and around the corner to the town. We were staying in the Popular View guesthouse which was very nice and once again gave us free tea and coffee which kept us happy! They also did a really good free breakfast!

We seemed to spend a lot of our time in Vang Vieng asleep! But it is a very touristy town, with lots of places to eat and drink. Many of the places had big comfy cushions or beanbags to sit in and were showing Friends or Family Guy which was nice to chill out and watch all evening! The town really caters for the western tourist and there were loads of people walking around mindlessly drunk to the point where they couldn't even talk properly and would just stagger about making noises. We would find out the next day why so many people were all in such a state!

The following day we managed to get up and have breakfast by 1pm! We then headed out to do the number one tourist attraction of Vang Vieng, tubing. Basically you hire a big inner tyre tube, get driven a couple of kilometres upstream, then use your tube like a rubber ring to float down the river. Someone on the tuk tuk taking us to the top of the river said more Australians die tubing, than have in Afghanistan which is an interesting fact! The scenery here is beautiful with big green mountains either side of the river as you float along in the sun! However, before we even got in the water at the starting point, we were given a shot of whiskey, played in a game of volleyball, and were taken in another bar for another free whiskey shot. They like their whiskey here! Every bar has people dancing or just sitting and chilling in the sunshine. Eventually we all hopped on our rings and were off. We were in the water literally for three minutes when we had some ropes thrown at us and we were pulled into the next bar for another whiskey shot. If you want to do the whole tubing route it apparently takes two and a half hours to complete but some people say they don't even make it past the fifth bar! We now understood why people back at the town were so unbelievably drunk if they'd been here all day! We set off again and ignored some of the ropes been thrown at us and floated on. This was until someone jumped in and dragged us over to another bar an hauled us onto the side! So another drink was in order! At this area in the river, the water was a bit deeper and all the bars had high wire zip lines and swings or slides where you drop off into the water. I had a go on a swing, it was pretty high, so I just stuck to the bar after that!
We carried on along the river for a while, but once the sun had gone behind the mountains, even though it was still light, it got pretty cold! Apparently we were still about 2.5km away from the halfway point but we were freezing and it was getting darker so we got out and climbed up a massive ladder to get a tuk tuk back to town. I don't imagine many people actually finish the tubing route.
If you get your tube back by 6pm, they give you half your money back, but the problem with this is, no one has any idea what time it is as everyone leaves their watches and phones at home so to not get them wrecked in the river. But we made it with 10 minutes to spare. I think a lot of people probably don't bother going back and just stay and have a drink and leave their tube at the bars. Also, the money here has just confused us. 1GBP is about 12,500kip so it was nice to go to a cash machine and have the option to draw 1,000,000 out! I think it's the closest any of us will be to being millionaires any time soon!

Today we're taking a bus over to the capital Vientiane for a flying visit, before taking another overnight train to Bangkok for our last stop on South-East Asia.

They day started with some drama, our alarm had a malfunction so we had 30 minutes to get up, get ready, pack, pay the guesthouse and get over to the office where the bus was picking us up from! Which meant there was no time for our ftee breakfast today! It was a good job Jade woke up when she did to ask the time!
But we made it on time and got a bus to the bus station, then another bus to Vientiane. Once again we all appear to have the worst seats on the bus that fold out from another seat into the aisle and don't have a proper backrest. At least it was only for four hours!

If we had more time I would have definitely liked to have spent more time in Laos. People we spoke to told us the north of the country is very pretty and a bit more rustic. Maybe we could save that for next time...

Amy x