We left Vientiane and began the 4 hour bus journey to Vang Vieng along the bumpiest roads I have ever been on. The scenery was amazing though and when we checked into our hotel, we also had an amazing view from our balcony, that you could stare at for hours!!

We decided to go and explore but as it was so hot we all ended up in the Aussie bar and had a couple of lovely cold Beer Laos. In the evening we went to a restaurant near our hotel, not long after sitting down outside, next to the river, it suddenly started to pour with rain and we had to quickly grab our stuff and head upstairs to a table with shelter, although the shelter did not really do a lot as the wind got up and the rain was coming in the open sides. Then there was a power cut and we were plunged into darkness, with lots of thunder and lightning!! Once the power came back on they were able to cook our food and we had the best spring rolls, followed by red curry with sticky rice, before heading further into town for a cocktail.

On our last day in Vang Vieng Linn, Kate and I got a tuk-tuk for about 45 minutes out to some caves. After crossing a rather rickety bridge over the river we first visited the elephant cave which had an elephant shaped stalactite and a large Buddha footprint inside the cave. The second cave we visited was Tham Hoi, which was a 3km long cave, which we walked into for a fair distance. Our torches kept showing massive spiders on the sides of the cave, so I tried to just focus on what was in front and not what was next to me, although it was quite scary to walk that far into the rock. The last cave we visited was Tham Nam, which had a really low entrance with a tributary of the Nam sang flowing out of it. As the cave has water in it you have to go on rubber rings with head torches on and hold onto a rope which then took us inside the cave. After a while the water became shallow again and we could explore on foot before heading back out of the cave on our rubber ring. We left the caves to head back to our tuk-tuk, when the local man who had shown us where to go demanded that we pay him as he had been our tour guide!! We were in the middle of nowhere and the 3 of us stood arguing with this guy who kept demanding money from us, we told him we would not pay what he was asking but would give him some money as a tip, we tried to walk away and he started following us, glaring at us and making us all feel uneasy and we really did not know what he would do. In the end we gave him a small amount of money and then walked away from him as quickly as possible, back to the village and our tuk-tuk driver, so we could get out of there as quickly as possible, only for the tuk-tuk driver to try and demand more money, which we were definitely not going to pay! Luckily he still took us back to town! It was such a shame as we had had a lovely day and it was then ruined by these two idiots!!

In order to relax a bit after a stressful day I headed to a spa and went and had a traditional Laos massage - which meant I was bent, hit and manipulated in ways that at times actually really hurt. However, at the end of it I did feel really relaxed and my body felt loads better!

In the evening we went out for dinner as a group and got freshly made pancakes on the way back to the hotel.

3 members of our group decided to stay in Vang Vieng though, so we lost Jake, Linn and Kate, which was really sad. This meant there were only 3 of us remaining and our tour leader.