to summarise the week just gone would be one word 'buses'! After our 16hour bus to hanoi we spent a few days relaxing, did a cruise of halong bay overnight which was stunning and planned ahead! it was then time for the bus journies of all bus journies - a 24hr bus to laos! however, despite paying more for a smart embassay bus it ended up being a crap sleeper bus with a million locals packed in the aisles with boxes of fish! to top it off the local woman next to us was being sick for around 2 hours into a small plastic bag! as you can imagine we didn't really sleep and on arrival in laos we figured we may as well get the bus to vang vieng to get our travelling done!

the bus to vang vieng was 5hrs making our overall journey time 29hours! i smelt, felt and looked awful!!! that night we slept for about 12 hours! the next day feeling slightly recovered we went tubing! basically you rent a tube, float down a river stopping at bars with big water slides, zip lines and free shots and get drunk all day! was really good fun and we carried on into the night where you could get free buckets of alcohol at one place or two for £1 later on - crazy!!!

yesterday we felt pretty awful again but more due to our own doing this time! we decided to move on to luang prabang on what is now a short journey of just 6 hours! however, it was with a crazy minibus driver through bending roads and i get travel sick making it another dreadful journey lol!

we got to luang prabang and checked into a nice place to recover from what has felt like a week of travelling! rather fortunately, luang prabang is lovely and has streets of pituresque restaurants, cafes and markets lit with fairly lights and lanterns. a needed break from the chaos of travelling and tubing!

going to spend a few days here before doing a mekong river cruise to the border of thailand!

byeee xxxx