Vang Vieng didn't start off the way I wanted, as soon as we arrived I crawled into my bed and didn't leave the room for nearly two days, I will definitely not go into detail but I had one hell of a stomach bug. Couldn't keep any food down so just gave up eating after a few attempts. Liv played mum and forced paracetamol and hydration sachets down my throat while Kate was researching online on NHS direct and off course Sooz was there to lift my spirits with her sweet singing and general sarcasm and brilliant stories. I think I worried my mother bear silly back home because I was messaging her asking what to do, my temperature hit 102f at around 1am and I didn't know what to do. It didn't feel right to go to the hospital though, I ended up just keeping my temperature manageable by paracetamol, water and showers. Pretty horrible experience, especially when I only had a few days with Sooz while she was here and they were wasted on me being a liability back in the hotel room. We just kept thinking how the hell are we going to cope in India if this is what Laos does to us. Everyones had stomach issues since they've been here but I'm obviously the weakest wolf in the pack. The day before Kate's birthday we went out for food and wanted to reign in her birthday with some drinks, I was obviously still clutching my 2 litre water bottle at this point but we went to the only bar club that was open after the 11pm curfew. As we were walking through the door, we were greeted by two ladyboys walking out and excusing past us, first ones Sooz has seen, her face was a picture haha. The club was a smoking dark box room with locals dancing on empty beer crates, dancing and ladyboys 'slut-dropping' everywhere. The air spelt of a mix of spices and sick. It was pretty horrendous for me but I didn't want Kate to notice so I smiled away and swayed on the spot to the music, sipping my water. It was funny people watching in the club though, they kept me entertained. We bumped into Anna and Cassie from Luang Prabang too which was nice, although they had been drinking milk shakes of the fungi variety so they were extra entertaining. My body made a clear sign that it was ready for me to leave so once people finished their drinks we made our way back to the hotel. The main thing was, it had gone 1am so we had brought in Kate's birthday in a fun way.

The next morning it was Kate's big day, I woke up early, sneaked out to the bakery down the road and picked up a birthday Danish pastry and a waterproof camera to add to the other goodies we had got her. The waterproof camera was because we were going tubing that day. For those of you that don't know what tubing is, I'll explain later on. When I sneaked back in the room, Liv had managed to get the balloons out from under my bed that we had blew up the night before and got the presents together that we had bought. We got her a new watch (because her other one had broke), the waterproof camera, some m&ms, made her a card and had the birthday Danish pastry for brekkie. Finding presents was a little challenging. We woke up by playing Stevie Wonders version of 'Happy Birthday' through the speakers. Hopefully she enjoyed it.. We all sat around her bed, while she unwrapped the gifts and read her cards from us and her family (well done Alice for bringing those out). Time for the birthday bakery breakfast before our day of tubing. So a quick explanation of tubing; Vang Vieng in Laos used to be renowned for the tourist attraction of 'tubing culture', there's a river that runs parallel to the town, you rent rubber tube rings and float down the river. In the old days (last year) they used to have bars running down the river and you would hop off your tube and grab a few drinks in each place as you go down the 5km river. You can imagine how messy it would've got and the carnage it caused. Well, sadly there was a quite a few deaths because it was so crazy and so the police intervened and shut it down. Nowadays it's more of a chilled environment and only a few of the naughty bars are illegally open so its on a much smaller scale. Plus we was out of season as we were visiting right at the end of the dry season so the river was really shallow so don't worry parents, we wasn't in any danger. We had a really fun day, got a few drinks to take with us on the tube, tied our flip flops to our wrists and sailed down the river. Stopping at the few bars that were open along the way. At one point the river was too shallow and we kept getting our bums stuck on the rocks, Kate decided to jump out and walk for a bit but in the doing so she lost her drink and then her tube whilst trying to grab her drink haha luckily one of the girls we had met managed to rescue her tube for her down the river. I loved tubing, even though it wasn't the big party it used to be, it was beautiful floating down the river, looking at the scenery, having a gossip, messing around and then stopping at a bar when we came up to one. The tubes had to be returned by 6pm if we wanted our deposit back, at 5pm we still had over 2km left to go, ekk, time to get our paddle on!! Frantically flapping our arms trying to move as quickly as possible. We even got out and walked some of the way but luckily made it back with 5 minutes to spare, so we spent that 5 minutes cheering people toward to finish line like a marathon haha. After the sudden spurt of exercise that we were forced to do, a rest was in order and where better to relax then a bar playing repeats of 'Friends' episodes - which is basically in every bar, heaven in mine and Kate's eyes. I couldn't face much food so went for the safe option of plain sticky rice, didn't want to risk anything to adventurous because of my stomach. Sooz had gone back to the room to pack her stuff up as sadly she was leaving the group that night to travel to Vietnam to meet some of her other friends. Once I finished my tasty dish I went back to the room to spent some final quality time with Ms Everson before she deserted me. We popped out to sort final bits whilst the other two showered up. Faces on, out we went to a bar for Kate's birthday drinks, the bar man gave her a free shot and taught her how to skull a beer. Good effort on Kate's part, she did well! I've never dared try. It was funny listening to the bar mans stories of his years of travelling around Asia. Kate's parents treated us all to a birthday drink too, so thank you for that Kate's mum and dad :) Sadly Sooz was working on a clock due to her bus leaving at midnight so we walked her back to pack up last bits and wait for the pick up bus. Turns out the bus never showed, instead, a motorbike. The man we booked the bus with had come to take her to the bus. Sooz was genuinely terrified for her life when she was climbing on the bike, pure fear in her eyes. I clenched her tight in an embracive hug and told her everything would be okay then waved her off. I couldn't hold the tears of saying goodbye so I needed a few minutes to myself after she left, we decided to go to bed afterwards because we had our bus early the next morning to Bangkok.

Woke up to the normal packing and checking out routine, until I came face to face with a cockroach the size of four fingers in the bathroom, I don't think I have ever screamed like that in my life. I couldn't even leave because it was by the door, I made a run for it and had Liv grabbed me to comfort me for a minute but I just wanted to get out of that room. Blerghhh, gives me the shivers just writing about it. Our first bus to Vientiane was a bit of luxury, leather seats, place to rest our legs, air con. Very nice, shame it was only 3 hours out of the 20 hour journey. Oh and I should've mentioned that the 13th, 14th and 15th of April is New Years in south east Asia. The tradition is to have big water fights to encourage the rain to come to start the wet season so their crops can grow again. They also cover you in flour and this watery coloured clay stuff, never got to understand why that did that in the end but it was funny watching the state of people and how it covered the streets. In Laos it's called Lunar New Year but in Cambodia it's called Khmer New Year and in Bangkok it's called Songkran. We had a two hour stopover in Vientiane before our next bus so went walking in search of food and heard pumping music ahead of us, turns out it was a group of locals celebrating the NY around a water fountain. We decided to quickly scoff some food and go back to the water party. A few westerners had joined in by the time we returned, so it was a good fun, empty beer buckets used to throw water on each other, water pistols attacking us from every angle, people dancing in the fountain and locals handing us free beer. Sadly we had to keep an eye on the time because we had to completely get changed as we were sodden through. Our rucksacks were waiting for us at the travel shop and it ended up being quite a challenge to get changed outside the shop on the pavement. Ended up doing the old beach trick of holding your towel round you with your teeth and getting changed underneath. We just tried to laugh it off and make light of it but not sure how the travel agents felt about it. Then we wasn't left with much choice on what to do with our wet clothes so I had to hang them around me on the bus to dry them, the other two put theirs in plastic bags but we had such a long journey ahead I just wanted them dry. When we reached the boarder crossing and it was the weirdest thing, it was just like we was back at that party, the boarder police all had music playing, throwing flour everywhere, drunk locals dancing their butts off. Hilarious, doubt I'll ever go to a boarder crossing like at again. After a big of a long wait, we made it past the the Thailand boarder and onto our train for the night, apart from still suffering from my stomach it was a surprising easy journey. Another visit to Bangkok was upon us.