We are most definitely staying somewhere much nicer. It's quite a walk out of town, crossing the rickety wooden pedestrian bridge, following the dirt track along the river and then turning right where a stream meets the main water body. It's all the better for it! Our guesthouse/bungalows are called Maylyn and are set amongst lush gardens, overlooking a tiny stream, fields at the back of us and the mountainous karst scenery beyond these. It's £10 a night and that's for the best room. Rarely do we have bedside table and bedside lamp....it's the small things that matter :) We also have a balcony with amazing view and table and chairs to sit out and enjoy the evening.
We are surrounded by the sound of crickets and roosters. No building noise or early rising families to wake us up tomorrow, although we do need to rise relatively early for our kayaking trip down the Nam Song.
Vang Vieng isn't great. We both thought we may feel differently today seeing it once we had decent accommodation sorted. We don't.
It seems to be a mixture if South East Asian tour groups, middle age flash-packers like us, but travelling for a short holiday and therefore chuck a bit more money at it, and longer term budget, generally younger travellers. A real mix. The traffic is pretty bad and there is no great urban design; it's restaurants , shops & tour booking shops haphazardly chucked together.
People say Laotians are really friendly. Not our experience in Vang Vieng, especially not when you see graffiti on the hoarding of a major hotel build build saying 'travellers go home'. We don't exactly feel welcome here & whereas we though we would end up staying for over a week, we think we'll head off in 2-3 days. This place is too much on the SE Asia travelling circuit for our liking.
Vang Vieng in a few years could be considered really nice; it just needs to shake off the remains of its image associated with its hedonistic days that it was famous for until a couple of years ago, when people came to tube down the river, rave at the many river platforms and take cocktails of opium and booze.... I realise I sound like a Daily Mail writer!!! That is however what the place was famous for and there were a good many deaths as a result. It may be that the townspeople are just fed up of all the crap and as such, are not friendly to anyone!
Sat here though, you can forget that. We're in the countryside looking out to pitch black and for £10 per night, it's pretty much perfect where we are. The bungalows have a cafe and we can order dinner for tomorrow night. After kayaking we can come back here, relax in the gardens, have dinner & drink a bottle of wine on our balcony. Amazing!!
The sunsets too are phenomenal. We've not seen anything quite as good since we left Africa. The sun sets amidst two beautiful karst formations, the sky turning a pinky purple with colourful hot air balloons traversing the sky just before the sun sinks for the day, creating picture perfect frames.
Maybe in a couple of years this will be more up market, like Yangshou.

5th January
Sat on the beautiful balcony again listening to cows and crickets. The roosters start off around 4am but I don't find them annoying.
Yesterday we kayaked down the Nam Song and fared much better than the time we were last in a kayak together- cruising down the Zambezi dodging hippos & crocs! Perhaps that is why we were better, we didn't have the fear in us and could just leisurely paddle. Good job we didn't need assistance really. The extent of the safety briefing was 'can you kayak?'. 'A bit' was our reply. He then just chucked us in the water and that was that.
Upon returning we experienced the same level of friendly service in a restaurant & decided we definitely didn't want to come back into town again so we hunted out some wine and had dinner at the guesthouse & drank wine on the balcony.
Today we hired bikes and cycled 25km out in the countryside on the bumpiest dirt roads ever! I was splattered in mud within five minutes and exhausted from the bumpiness. Again people didn't seem too friendly. Young kids would look at us and so we would wave and say Sàbaidee and then they'd stick their hand out for money, some of them producing dollar bills from their pockets in case you hadn't already got the gist of what they were asking for.
As a result of the cycling, I'm struggling to sit down so the seven hours in a mini van to Luang Prabang tomorrow will be fun!
We've just booked two nights at a guesthouse which looks lovely, is run by a French couple & serves cake as part of their breakfast buffet. Can't wait. As soon as I read 'cake for breakfast', I told Tony to just go ahead & book it!
Laos accommodation generally isn't cheap, not in the cities anyhow. In Vientiane a private room in a hostel was £15, we paid £17 for a basic room but the accommodation was set around nice gardens but it was a fair walk out of town. Again in Luang Prabang, very basic accommodation is around £15 excl breakfast. We've decided to pay the top end of our price range for something a bit more boutique, and for the cake of course!! The days of Asia being dirt cheap is over it seems!