Vang Vieng, Vang Vieng. Oh my god what a place. I spent 3 of the most fun days of my life in this place and all without drinking too much alcohol! Amazing - the corner is well and truly turned for Burroughes!! When i say not drinking too much, dont worry; I havent become some type of monk or anything. Well Vang Vieng seems like a lifetime ago after all the crazy travelling I have been doing but I will talk about that later. For now I need to tell you all about the one place in Laos where I have had more fun than just about anywhere else in my life. This place is incredible. In fact the only thing I didnt like about it was the fact that every bar played Friends 24/7 but even that became endurable after 7 or 8 episodes.Oh and by the way, this is the second time I have had to write Vang Vieng so forgive me if i make presumptions about your knowledge! Also, I will try and keep language to a minimum as I gather that I have a more 'senior' readership 'logging on' and I dont want to ruin too many opinions of me. As for the USA lot, you already know me so too late there!The primary excitement in Vang Vieng revolves around tractors. Well to put it more definitively, tractor inner tubes and the Nam Xong river that runs through the centre of town. Backpackers (and i suppose more mature people if they so wish) can hire one of these tubes and float down the river in it. Amazing I know. Now add to this multitude of bars en route and rope swings, firefoxes (zip lines) high jumps and discos all the way along this route, you will now understand why I broke my camera, sunglasses and watch. The normal plan is to start 4km upstream from the town at about 10am and drift toward the first pub in time for lunch and then continue the motion, arriving in town at about 5pm. I had stuck with the crazy crew from the slow boat trip and needless to say, 4km was not deemed long enough to be in the sunshine drinking so instead we opted for the rather more hard core 10km option. And as mentioned, the pubs didnt start until about the 3.5km mark so we could sun ourselves but someone (I cant imagine whom) suggested taking supplies along in the form of a couple of bottles of whisky for the road /river / whatever. 15 mins into the trip, the whisky supplies were exhausted so we paddled hard (for a few mins) and then lay back to enjoy the ride down the river safe in the knowledge that the rapids were death defying at this time of the year and the fact that nobody had drowned in the past month. And so we set off down the river, singing, playing various games and generally enjoying ourselves but nothing could compare to the fun we had on the rope swings etc. I felt every impact for the next week on my back and swear I damaged a couple of ribs which went bluish black after a particularly fantastic leap from 20 or so feet in the air upside down. Add to this the fact that everyone was drinking buckets of whisky/redbull and coke (a strange but nice combination) and you then add in later in the day 'happy ingredients' for those of that persuasion and needless to say, the day passed with me smiling from ear to ear.As the sun set over Vang Vieng, Burroughes et al were still 2.5km away from the town, in the 'Happy Bar' huddling around a campfire swatting away mosquitoes. We had two options; first to paddle across the rover about 500m downstream and get out where hoards of tuk tuk drivers were prepared to lighten our wallets of huge amounts of wet money (yes the wallet got soaked too) or......to stay floating downstream. 1hr later, Burroughes decides that he is getting cold and he has promised Ali that he would call her sometime that day. Also, all his travel buddies have left the water and the moon, whilst offering enough light to see downstream with, is not convincing me that I will have enough warning to spot the multitude of river snakes that we spotted all day. I jumped out, donned the wet shoes and jogged back into town.I learnt several lessons that day - first, no matter how dry your dry bag says it is, water will get in - I did protect the camera and the evil water pixies picked the lock.Second, Laos style back massages after high diving is counterproductive and painful.Third, I want to go back to Vang Vieng and tube again.So, recovered from the joys of tubing, we decided a couple of days later to go caving. Now having spoken to a couple of locals, we came to the conclusion that it was perfectly feasible to find all the caves we wanted from the map and we didnt need a guide. 1 hr later, we pulled up (born to be wild style) on our 125cc mopeds and headed into the first cave (Tham Xang and Tham Hoi) - a hidey hole for the Laos resistance during the Indochina war. The first cave was completely untouched by humanity apart from cave graffiti and the odd bamboo ladder but there were no lights, signs or any safety features. Indeed, im not sure whether if we had of got lost in there, the little man who charged us at the entrance would bother to come into find his torches that some of the group borrowed.The first cave (which was a vast network of tunnels and crawl throughs) and we came out slightly impressed by the people who had lived in there during the war. We then headed off to the jewel in the crown of Van Vieng's caves - Pa Thao.This cave stretches more than 2km into the mountain and we found our little guide to take us to the waterfall at the innermost point. I had visions of a huge opening in the ceiling and a raging torrent falling 50-60m to the floor. Sadly when I actually reached the waterfall, it was little more than shoulder height but the trip there was amazing. We walked in a tunnel (naturally carved) roughly akin to the size of a London underground tunnel, which gradually became more and more cramped as we pushed on. We climbed and crawled time after time before finally reaching the point where the prepared donned swimming costumes and the unprepared....didnt! A chilly but not unpleasant swim for a couple of hundred metres saw us reach the waterfall and the pool behind it which was lovely. I was stunned (or perhaps suffering the early onset of hypothermia) but I marveled in the power of nature to create such an amazing structure.We left the cave into twilight and the inevitable onslaught of mosquitoes once again and duly followed the directions of the guide toward civilization. Cue heart stopping moment number 2 for that day. We arrived at a little bridge crossing the Nam Xong once again that was about a metre wide, 9 feet above the water with no guard rails, and only made of thin bamboo strips. Then put yourself onto a moped, in the dark, with mosquitoes dive bombing you from every angle in search of dinner. I asked my passenger to alight from the moped and went across, heart in mouth and deciding that if i fell in, the moped could rust on the bottom of the river, i wasnt going to try and save it. I think the worst part of it was that the kind villagers fleeced us for 2 dollars each for the privilege of defying death. The cheek! Who needs New Zealand white knucke rides when you have Laos.I left Vang Vieng sorry to be moving on but I had decided that I had to see Phonsaven as it featured in the top 50 things to see in SE Asia and I also needed a new camera to continue the happy snap bonanza as I go. I have taken nearly 1600 pics already! Yikes. So off I went on the bus to Vientiane, the nations fine capital and in search of a camera.Speak soon.