I survived tubing in Vang Vieng! I was pretty worried about coming here cos of the fact that before I came out I had nothing to do but read the millions of stories of people getting killed or maimed here, so I'm quite relieved to be leaving really! That said, it's been an AMAZING 3 days here. I'm feeling a bit like a zombie at the moment, it's all been a bit mental and even forming proper sentences is a bit of an effort but I'll give it a go!

So I got to Luang Prabang after the 12 hour bus ride which was a lot better than expected even if I was constantly finding myself headbutting the guy next to me in some sort of malarone fueled sleep-headbanging session, he was probably a bit freaked out. Checked into a place called Xanaya (I think) which was nice but a bit too strict, most hostels I've been in have been so chilled out and helpful that seeing signs everywhere saying you absolutely can't swap beds after checking in was a bit weird. Laos is a bit less friendly than Thailand from what I can tell.

Anyway the first night I went for dinner with a girl called Anna from my room where some American guy offered me a bite of his chicken, thus making us friends. Him and his friend and Anna and me decided to go to the bowling alley which is what people (westerners) do here cos the bars all close at 11pm and the alley's open till 2am. We kinda missed the vital point that people only go after the bars close so it was completely deserted and we had to sheepishly do the 6km trip back to town to sit in a bar for a bit! So we drank a bit then ran into two girls Anna had met in Vietnam, and all went to the bowling alley again. We realised when we got there that nobody actually had any money so we didn't actually bowl... drank a lot of beerlao instead and ended up falling asleep in the girls' hostel, oops.

Had booked a caving and waterfalls trip for the next day, which are the two main things to do in Luang Prabang. The two hour boat trip to the caves was nice for a bit but got a bit dull after a while, especially since the other girls in my hostel were on a different boat and I was stuck talking to some crazy American guy. Caves aren't too exciting, the point being that they're filled will millions of buddah statues, but there's only so many times you can get excited about seeing a buddah and I think Thailand filled my quota! We stopped at a whisky village on the return trip, 3 shots later and I slept all the way on the boat back, which is trickier than it sounds on rickety wooden chairs! The waterfalls woke me up though, they're really blue and lovely and cold, and there's a pretty fun rope swing. Played around there with the girls who were on the boat and my hostel: Holly, Brittany, Lois and Jodi, and agreed to go back to the bowling alley with them that night. For the third time though I failed to go drunken bowling cos I fell asleep... again. Goddammit.

So I've been travelling with those girls ever since. Lots of people avoid Vang Vieng like the plague cos it's basically a bunch of wasted tourists risking their lives being stupid and trying to get with each other.... which is pretty much spot on... but actually being part of it is so much fun, it's just a big party where everyone's automatically your friend even if you don't know their name, and you just play games on a riverside and laugh at all the people on mushrooms. I already miss it, I'm in south Laos right now and even though everyone's quite nice, they all seem so unfriendly compared to Vang Vieng.

So we spent all three days doing the tubing (except without tubes cos nobody does that anymore apparently!), we were gonna go bike to some caves on the third day but left it too late and there was nothing left to do but go back to the river. It's hard to escape. And the rest of the time you just lie in a bar watching Friends which is literally playing in every other building there, you can just hear the themetune everywhere you go, very strange. I was feeling a bit homesick though so I appreciated that especially! The last day we went to a jungle party out of town which apparently doesn't happen too often and they shut down all the other bars for it. There was a bit of a storm coming and the lightening was nicely silhouetting the mountain above the 'jungle' where a Thai reggae band was playing which was all very cool until the rain came and we realised we were all stranded miles out of town with no tuktuks. We formed big huddles of 20 randomers, like penguins, trying to keep warm in the hail before giving up on that and sprinting back through the now-river to get back to the roads. Storms make everything way more exciting.

We sadly said goodbye to Vang Vieng seeing as we were falling apart a bit, and headed down to Vientienne on the most furstratingly bad road I've seen. Jodi and Lois left after two days so it's just me Holly and Brittany now. I was planning on going down to Bangkok then to the Thai islands but that meant a night in Vientienne which everyone says is crap, so I decided to follow the girls down to the 4000 islands instead to chill out a bit. Now that I'm here it all feels a bit too chilled out compared to everywhere else, but it really is lovely here and tomorrow we're off on a kayaking trip to see some dolphins with Louise, another girl we met in Vang Vieng, so that should be cool. Trip down here was awful (best bit was the 2 hours of the bus company guy telling us it would be there in '5 minutes' until he eventually just ran away and the rest of the people waiting took over the office phone and computers to warn people away. There was also a rather funny monk staring at me on the sleeper bus and giving us sweets...), and the trip to Bangkok will take a whole day, so these dolphins better be worth it!

Oh and my 'waterproof' camera broke, potentially wiping two days' worth of photos from Vang Vieng. They probably shouldn't have seen the light of day anyway but I'm pretty sad that I'm now down to just TWO cameras! I did accidentally steal some guy's camera there (god knows how - I gave it to some girls who were in the photos to hopefully track him down)... knew I should have kept it!

Right I've written this out twice cos the electricity keeps cutting out in Laos, that's quite enough!