Boarding the bus north we were impressed already! The bus wasn't bad at all compared to many we had experienced, it was very chilled with no awful loud blaring music, dodgy videos or constant beeping, result! It really was bliss after Vietnam and Cambodia....The driver drove as chilled as could be, he even stopped to allow a baby chicken to cross the road rather than flattening it at high speed, definitely not what we were used too! Then he stopped after 5 minutes as he decided he fancied a sandwich, we did then start to wander though how long this chilled attitude meant the journey would take! The first 2 and a half hours saw a pretty flat landscape as we followed the main highway up north. We were quite surprised at what we saw, expecting more poverty than previously, instead we saw mainly concrete houses rather than shacks/mud huts which were pretty big in many cases and everyone had a lot more land not living on top of each other as previously seen. We did wonder though if further north this view would change. The journey was a great experience, we saw young kids walking and cycling the long school run home- laughing and playing in the mud in the process, tuk-tuks and songathews piled unbelievably high with everything- TV's mattresses, washing machines, you name it! Local taxi's were similar to the highland taxi's of Vietnam, 3 wheel tractors with an entire herd of people rammed into the trailer on the back like sheep would be! Cows typically wandered aimlessly in the roads, local buses held together JUST were piled high with the usual families, bikes and mopeds and the view saw us passing lush rice paddies and beautiful flat landscape. After two hours we stopped at 'The Goat Restaurant' and on seeing some very dodgy looking meat for sale (Laos is renowned for eating everything that moves!) Zach and I opted for an ice cream and Ads a cheese sandwich!!!! The last two hours of the journey saw a dramatic change in the landscape, we started to climb higher along very winding roads with forested mountains appearing all around us, it was beautiful. Local life saw bamboo/reed shacks appearing but still bigger and with more land than the rural, poverty stricken & cramped villages of Vietnam and Cambodia. The comparison of population density definitely makes a difference here..... Nearing their dinner time, we saw the Laos family ritual in the villages - washing before dinner as the men and women separately crowded round the local well/pump and needless to say many men in y fronts were seen! Kids still continued to play in the mud and around camp fires, amusing themselves so easily and happily, a site that even poverty doesn't seem to be able to take away from the kids in Asia, its so wonderful to see, especially when you think what western children have and need at home to keep them occupied!!! Higher still the mountains became even more dramatic as we followed the Nuam Lao river, it was just beautiful and very hard to believe that the tourist area we were heading for actually existed amongst this landscape, I would have been so happy to stay at one of these villages instead if we had had the time too...... Arriving finally in Vang Vien, it was quite dark but we could just see the outline of looming limestone mountains around us which I was pretty excited to see in daylight! The village, although touristy, reminded me of a small and chilled European ski village, lots of relaxed restaurants, bars and locals selling pancakes on the side of the road! Bizarrely old episodes of 'Friends' were on most TV's in all the restaurants much to my joy and Ad's annoyance! We managed to find a cheap 4 dollar guest house on the river, the rooms were pretty grim but clean and at that point it was definitely more about the cost than what they looked like! We ate some good local spicy food (at last!) then headed down to the infamous island and 'Smile Bar' that backpackers rave about! Was all very random, travellers sat around an open fire drinking LOTS, whilst an Irish DJ called Martin played some tunes and bizarre looking lady boys (mainly one who looked like Victoria Beckham - sorry Posh! and who wore a straw to mimic the microphone look of the spice girls, VERY weird!) danced around. The vodka buckets went down well, a weird local women (yes she was a lady for sure!) grabbed me to dance, and by the end of the night buckets for other purposes were needed...... Waking up (with a weenie hangover) to the view of the limestone mountains around us was INCREDIBLE! It reminded me of Banff in the Rocky Mountains, it was just beautiful, especially as local children were diving off makeshift piers and playing in the river valley beneath our hostel, Laos was without doubt a stunning and wonderful country! After a fry up for the boys and cornflakes for me we prepared ourselves for the world renowned, Vang Vien TUBING experience! Those that have been there will know it well I am sure....We queued for ages, got our number stamp on our hands, signed an unread contract, then boarded a dodgy tuk-tuk to take us to the start, after strict instructions to return the tube by six pm at the LATEST....uuuummmm! Sitting in the front was an experience, the doors had no handles or inner functionality and when the tubes fell down blocking all visibility for the driver, he increased speed!!! Arriving to the river was just stunning, beautiful valleys, slightly ruined by the drunken tubists floating down them, but still as peaceful and as stunning as landscapes come.... The water was pretty freezing but all in all the tubing was just TOPS! Due to a lack of current we basically wandered very slowly down the valley with a host of other tubers, stopping at makeshift bamboo bars on route, which for the crazy of us had mental death style rope swings and zip slides to throw yourselves off...we didn't try many mum(s) honest! It was very hard though not to be tempted as the locals helped you in by pulling you towards to the bars with a stick, so being new to the country we had to oblige! I, feeling rather tender went pretty slowly on the beer but the boys managed to keep drinking! Ads and I did some of the rope swings which were so much fun but Zach for once in his life was sensible not to break even more ribs and try them! The swinging into the river wasn't the hard part; it was more the height at which you had to climb to catapult yourself and then the landing you had as you crashed into the water at speed, pretty painful if you go bum first on my part! It was hilarious though to see some of the wipe outs drunken people did and all in all there was a great buzz about the place.....Irish DJ Martin miraculously was playing some tunes again too and on seeing Ads and I laughed, what had we done the night before, ooops??!!! ! I got told I had 'good form' by some travellers for my rope swing attempts, (whatever that means!) and Ads I am sure had equally good form too, Ha!Ha! At the last main rope swing we realised that we had managed to only tube past about 3 bars (there were approx 8 in total) and many hours had passed, the 6pm curfew was looking quite difficult to hit and the sun was disappearing, plus the current! Aware of this we met up with a mad group of equally drunken tubers and attached ourselves to them to make it quicker down the river....unfortunately this didn't appear to work as we all just laughed and chatted and nobody hence paddled!! By now it was getting very dark and pretty cold so we all decided local Tiger whiskey at 'The last stop' bar (or so we thought) was the answer but this didn't seem to help! By now I had got chatting more to a wicked Irish girl called Amanda, who bizarrely also worked at Cancer Research UK when I did but Amanda was on the science/research side, amazing how many people we both knew though! Unknown to us though our chatting had meant that everyone was miles ahead now, it was dark (which in the mountain valleys was pretty scary!) it was now 7pm and bloody freezing!!! Amanda and I tried to beg local fishermen to take us to the end, which we thought had worked until a local man on the riverside shouted at him so he rode off! It turned out that the other guy had a tuk tuk (for probably double the price!) so we ended up getting into this and with Ads cheated for the rest of the journey!!! Despite the tuk- tuk not starting for a good 20 minutes, it was slightly warmer than the river and Ads had now turned a slightly lighter shade of blue than previously!!! We wearily handed the tubes back in very late to be joined by Zach and the others also freezing in the dark. After hot showers and curry we felt better so the 'Smile bar' it was...not for long I hasten to add! That eve it was Ads turn to be the ill one! The next day we were due to meet Amanda and go mountain biking but Ads had picked up some fever (alcoholic induced maybe?)and wasn't too good so we left Zach and Amanda to explore whilst I played nurse! Thankfully Ads felt better by the eve so we met up with an American couple, Alecia and Brian, we had met tubing for dinner. I tried Beef Lap, one of the local Laos specialities which was a dry but tasty meal and then Ads and I (after my local chocolate pancake!) retired to bed whilst the others, god knows how, managed the Smile Bar again! Our last day in Vang Vien saw us trying out the more sober of the many planned activities you could do there - Minority Village visiting, caving on a tube and kayaking! An early start and Spanish omelette saw Ads feeling heaps better but me not too great, think the last few days of 'typical backpacker madness' was testing the old 30 something body! Needless to say we joined the trip and drove 20km upstream seeing loads of local culture and life, villages, schools and amazing scenery, huge limestone monsters climbing out of the ground covered in dense undergrowth and towering trees! Arriving at the local village, Amanda and I were still, as the boys put it, chatting lots! It was really good to have abit of girl company for me for a change and Amanda was wicked and so much fun, so it was great for the threesome to now become a foursome for nearly the rest of our travel in Laos! We walked across an old rickety wooden bridge and watched the local villager's intensely watching/spearing fish in the river. The Elephant village (minus elephants) we visited had a monkey in a cage which had been kept for 5 months, it wasn't the nicest thing to see, but our guide said it was done to enable it to calm down so that it could then be allowed safely into the village. Next we visited the elephant cave which had a reclining Buddha, and elephant shaped stalagmite & footprint, hence the village name. On route then to the next cave, we passed an old lady washing her clothes in the river who gave us a beautiful smile; the Laos people are so incredibly friendly. Passing through more rice paddies, irrigation systems, puppies, chickens and lots of kids, we then arrived at the cave and I watched as Ads, Amanda and Zach, braved the freezing cold water, donned their head torches and disappeared into the darkness on tubes pulling themselves along by a rope.......needless to say my claustrophobia won and I didn't join them! Ads account - 'It was bl***y cold to say the least and dark, not the most sensible choice but REALLY exhilarating stretching deep into the mountain. I turned my torch off as it was useless and the word 'dark' then became an understatement! Experience was pretty cool though and we must have gone in for about 100m!'" Bright sunlight again and good food followed by a mental tuk- tuk drive to the kayak start - Ads and Zach chose to sit on the top and the guy just sped down the bumpy dirt tracks at high speed irrelevant of the fact that anyone was on the roof - on telling him this fact, he sped up!!! All arrived still alive thank god and then we set off, after a dry land paddling lesson, in our duo kayaks down the river. Kayaking down the river valley was beautiful, reminded me of NZ, plus it was so peaceful - especially as we were upstream from the tubers! The river was pretty low at times so we had fun navigating the rocks at times! The only couple to wipe out was a rather large American guy and his 'local lady,' quite an odd couple to say the least who didn't seem to have particularly known each other for long or be able to coordinate their paddling, so on a rocky rapid, they hit the rock side on, tipped and fell out. Everyone near hopped into help them and they seemed ok, thankfully though they were put in separate boats from there on! We then reached the tubers and just had to stop at the 'Last Bar' again and do one last swing rope! My god it was cold, but thankfully they had an open fire for us to sit round before returning to our kayak! It was good for us to finally see the actual last leg of the river that we had missed and beautiful to pass herds of buffalo swimming/cooling down in the river and more kids (mainly girls this time) spear fishing. We then passed Smile Bar and loads of people chilling on the bamboo riverside hammocks looking over the mountain range, just perfect. On leaving our kayaks, Ads had another roadside hair cut in what looked like a death chair! then we walked down to the river to sit on the hammocks, chill and watch the sun go down. Bob Marley was playing in the background, we played some cards too and all expressed how extremely lucky we were to be where we were, doing what we were doing, which on all accounts was a far cry away from the reality of home at that point in time! One thing to add though - Zach lost cards AGAIN! Amanda, the new card player in town thrashed us all! Feeling pretty bust we all then had our last meal in Vang Vien as we had decided we needed to move on the next day. Unfortunately my upset stomach got the better of me so the loo was my evening night out but Amanda and Zach made the Smile Bar one more time whilst Ads became the nurse!