HAPPY NEW YEAR!!!

We are still in Laos at the moment in Vang Vieng. Everyone here is celebrating Lunar New Year- 3-4 days of lots of Beer Lao drinking (starts about 8 in the morning!!!), lots of music and lots of water!!!- everyone is walking the streets soaked and you can't walk 10m down the main streets without getting a soaking!!! its all great fun. We have a cute little bungalow just out of town for 150,000kip a night about $16usd) which is set on the side of the Nam Song river. Its a cool little place - mainly based around tourism. there are 'happy' cafes everywhere with special 'happy menus' and Friends reruns playing on the tv.

The secenery is prety good as well. The town is surrounded by limestone mountains and cliff-faces which look similar to those of thailand but aren't surrounded by the sea. Yesterday we hired push bikes and rode out to a set of caves that is located in the base of the cliffs. The ride was about 5 kms maximum! but a lot of it was throuhg fields and along unsealed tracks. We are feeling the conequences of the not so comfotrable (or suitable) push bikes we hire LOL. But the ride was worth it, and the caves we inrteresting and about 15 degress cooler than the outside temp! One cave alos had a lagoon or pool down inside. Neither of us was game enough to jump in as it was just a little bit creapy being 50m down a pitch black tunnel and going for a swim in a pool where you cant see the bottom nor know what lives in the countless amounts of underwater entrances to the pool!

Today, we plan to do the 'main' attraction in Vang Vieng ... river tubing! Basically they blow up a heap of trackor innner tubes, drive 3km up stream and dump you in the current. It apparently takes a couple of hours to float back to town. You may be saying 'that doesnt sound like much of an attraction!' Thats not all ... the fun part is the bars! There are heaps of bars on the banks of the river which throw out bamboo poles so you can drag yourself over, grab a coldie then keep on floating to the next! Sounds great hehe sounds like a future busniess at Ewingar huh ;)

We are heading to Luang Prabang tommorow morning to continue the celebrations!! We will be there for about 3 nights and then we are heading up to the north west of Laos to do 'The Gibbon Experience' and then cross into Thailand- should be great fun!!

Anyway, if we dont bash our heads after too many beers while tubing down the Nam song rapids, we will blog again in a few days...

Till then,

Andrew & Amy