We got up on 17th September from our guest house in Vientaine, quickly got ready and headed down to settle our bill (£12 each for 2 night accommodation, laundry and bus tickets to Vang Vieng not bad). We then got a tuk tuk truck to the bus and were off on the bumpy Laos roads towards Vang Vieng, I am never complaining about potholes in England again. Also once again after 5 minutes on the bus Rachel was fast asleep.

We drove to about half way and stopped for a pee and food and sat watching a goat for 10 minutes before getting back on our way. The drive into Vang Vieng was spectacular, amazing scenery of mountains covered in lush green forests. We finally arrived and the bus conveniently dropped us off at a guesthouse, the owners asked us to come see the rooms, which were nice little huts. We had a look at the map and it wasn't too far from the centre (around a 10 minute walk), but we expected it to be very expensive and that's why the bus had dropped us there…… and we were right but as we couldn't be bothered to lug our bags round to find another place we just decided top pay the £6.10 per night per room.

After making ourselves at home we headed to the reception to ask about tours, they offered a Kayaking, caving and tubing tour for 100,000 kip we decided to have a think about it and headed out for a walk. We then found the 'Green View Tour' place which offered the same for 90,000 kip plus he gave us a free banana, so we booked this one as this was the one that was recommended by lonely planet….. or was it. We then carried walking along the street and popping in and out of a few shops until we reached a place called 'Green Discovery Tour' which looked a lot more professional……… oh dear so that's the one Lonely planet recommends, but they didn't have any banana's.

We then wondered to a restaurant to grab some food and use there WiFi. We headed right to the back to seats that were on a balcony overlooking the River, gorgeous. We ordered a green curry, red curry and a Laos traditional dish. The rain then started which looked incredible across the River. However their was a courtyard between us and the main restaurant to our waitress got soaked bringing us our food, hee hee. We gobbled down the grub and the banana and strawberry shakes mmmmm, just in time for the rain to start seeping through our cover. We hummed and hared about whether to take the free shower but in the end we decided to make a dash across the courtyard to the main area. This was a very good decision as they had friends playing on the TV's.

We then saw a few of the guys from our old tour walk past, who had been tubing all day. We had a chat and agreed to meet around 9 at a bar called Q-Bar. We stupidly decided to head back for a freshen up and got drenched. We then sorted some bits out and were about to head out to meet the others, at this point it was already 9 and it was a half am hour walk away. By now the monsoon rain had really started and there were streams in the street it was so bad. We wondered whether to bother or not but since we didn't have much else to do decided to brave it. We got there drenched and sat down with a drink to wait for them. A Polish guy then asked if he could sit with us and he sat down with a bucket of whisky, from the look of him I think he must have already had quite a few of them already. We chatted to him for a bit then decided to head back to the hotel assuming the others from the tour had a lot more sense then us and decided to stay in the dry.

We got back to our hut then realised we had made the foolish mistake of locking our phones (which was our alarm clocks) up in the safe. We tried asking for them but they just said they had no key, so we went to bed keeping our fingers crossed that we would wake up in time for the tour and a quick breakfast before hand.