As things were starting to move on time wise on this trip, with so much left to see we decided that the best way to get into Laos from Hanoi was to fly. This was fine but there was one slight concern......Lao Airways! We could only afford to pay for the cheapest option and in this instance it was Lao Airways. There is a reason that they are the cheapest option, and its because they are the only airline that doesn't publish its saftey record because it is so bad! It is highly recommended by many guide books not to use Lao Airways for this reason. However we had no choice and booked it through an agent. we got to Hanoi airport and I thuink it was easily the smallest airport i'd ever been in, we went through check in and then to Security.

In the queue Dave realised that he still had his pen knife in his carry on luggage, I said to him that it'd be fine they wouldn't notice it as it was such a small operation they had. However sure enough it got flagged up and they told him that he'd have to check it in to the hold, with that he sped off back to check in. Check in told him that he would need to put it in a bag for it to be checked in, so again ran off to a shop to ask them for a plastic bag. Once with a bag went back to the desk and they again refused saying they meant a luggage bag not a plastic bag. Dave protested that this was a gift from his Dad and was in no way going to be leaving it there! after more discussions with the check in personell saying no, another girl behind the desk that wasn't involved just held up a box full of leaflets and said you could use this! The first attendant looked down at her with the expression 'You b****!!' the knife got checked in and we were on our way. we met a Canadian Guy called Troy who we first met in Hanoi, so we decided to go on together. The plane and the flight were surprisingly good, very comfortable in fact.

On Arrival we jumped into a taxi to take us from Vientienne the capital to Vang Vieng, which was a 3 hour Journey. We had our first encounter with the local people on this taxi journey, the driver agreed to pull over when he could for us to buy some beer for the remainder of the trip. He stopped at a street convenience store, where there was a gathering happening outside, intregeued, we walked over and they were some of the nicest and welcoming people that we had come across. They had wanted us to join there party, sat us down poured us beer and gave us crisps, we chatted with them and took group pictures. we finally bought some more beers, said a genial farewell and got back on the road.

Now Vang Vieng was very high up on our list of places to go when we were planning our trip back in Manchester, for one thing. Tubing!! It was awesome. Basically Vang Vieng is a small town with a river running through it, and they have build lots of bars either side of this river. They rent out large tractor inner tubes and you sit on them and canter down the river when you want to go to a bar you wave and someone throws a rope out to you and pulls you in, you drink, dance and have a wicked time until you get back into your tube and float down the river with beer in hand to the next bar. Now, most of the bars have some kind of Swing, zip line or slide that fling you into the river. All of them look considerably dangerous with the odd prodruding rock coming out of the surface of the water, but also are immensly fun. We did each of them and all of us got some slight injury from them, especially Dave who knackered his back on the 'Death Slide' (this is its real name, scarily for obvious reasons). we spend four days in a row doing this having a mental time and knowinng that it was really time to give our bodies a break from this constant abuse. Mercifully our next stop was the sleepy town of Luang Prabang.

After an amazing bus ride through the spectacular mountains of North Loas we arrived in Luang Prabang. Luang Prabang is a very beautiful little town, quaint is a good description of it. It still has a very large French influence to it, and again life some parts of Northern Vietnam the native people still proudly fly French flags alongside Loas ones outside their homes. Which is slightly curious as they were never particularly generous to the colonised nations. It was a very religious place with a massive temple there which we wandered around. The only other thing to do after dark was strangely enough go bowling! all the bars closed really early in town to everyone who wanted to continue their night had to pile into tuk tuks and travel 20 minutes out of town and bowl and drink beer until the early hours. we stayed for 2 nights in Luang Prapang and we were seriously closing in on the end of our East coast trip, we wanted to bmake the most of it so glot another Loa Airways flight to Chang Mai for the home straight toward Australia.

Ok I'll leave it there for now, thanks for reading, and that you are all having a ball back home and enjoying the wonderful British summer (for a surprising change).

Lots of love missing you all.

Ben x x