Today we travelled by mini bus down south to vang vieng. The landscape of Laos is very different to the other countries its very green and mountainous so although a winding 6 hour journey, it was very pretty. On the way we stopped at a little roadside shack for a toilet break. And in one of the stalls was a dead monkey in a jar which was just disgusting.

Vang vieng is basically just a tourist town built for river tubing. So it felt very strange. Everywhere sold English food basically burgers and chips and everywhere played friends or family guy on giant TVs. We had met two scottish girls on our bus and had dinner with them. I tried a traditional lao dish called laap and it was horrible and spicy and so I didn't eat very much that day. Maybe thats how its actually supposed to taste or maybe the chefs are so used to cooking "western food" I should have probably picked a pizza or something because it would've probably been much nicer.

The next day we met up with the scottish girls and we all tried to find a cash point which took the best part of an hour, we then had lunch in a generic friends playing restaurant where they all have these little booths filled with cushions as seating. Dan describes this place the perfect place to have a hangover. Finally we went to try out river tubing with two Scottish girls and made friends with another couple. The president of Laos had shut down the river tubing only a week before we got there so apparently it was a lot smaller than it had been previously. This didn't really bother us none of us knew what to expect so we couldn't be disappointed.

We rented our tubes in town which are basically the inside of tractor tyres and got a tuk tuk to the first bar and then basically tube down the river stopping off at different bars until you reach town again. It was very quiet but it was really good fun and again the scenery from the river was amazing. It was quite hard to get to grips with and especially trying to stay together in a group of 6. In the second bar we found another group of 6 that had already been down today and then decided to go again. There were only 12 of us doing it in what I imagine would usually be filled with people- the scale of the second bar told us that was true. But we still had a good time and continued to the next bar. They pull you in by throwing a bottle attached to a rope and hauling you in. so you need to make sure that you catch it or hold onto someone's thats caught it! Otherwise you'll end up floating down alone! Luckily all of us made it out. The next one had a few more people and we all sat in a little hut made out of bamboo sharing little buckets of rum and coke. The local people there also made us little bracelets for free so we all got a little momento for the day.

Usually there would be lots more bars with slides and other stupid things people do whilst drunk and then wonder why they are injured but all of this was closed. We had to set off anyway as the locals told us if we didn't leave now then it would get dark whilst we would still be in the water. We all bought a last drink to take with us and tumbled back into our tubes to set off down the river.

The scenery for this part was amazing with all the mountains and little local huts along the river bank, whilst just strolling down the river. Luckily we had set off just in time because darkness had set in. We then had dinner with our new friends and then went to get some drinks. Everything shuts at around 10pm because of a curfew apart from one bar so it gets really busy. We didn't stay as long as the night before because we had a bus in the morning and dan didn't feel too well.