Vientiane and Vang Vieng - "Falang, Falang, Falang"
We arrived (with luggage) in Vientiane 20 hours and one break down later. The bus journey was not as bad as anticipated we arrived at the border at 5 in the morning and had to wait until the guards opened it at 7. The immigration officers at the Vietnamese side bizarely gave me a bird in a box as a present - We accidently opened it in the office and the bird flew out scattering their paperwork needless to say they were not happy bunnies. Fortunately they had already stamped us out of the country!
We got to Vientiane expecting a Hanoi style experience, as pretty much every traveller we had met had said to get out of the city as soon as you get in. We were pleasently surprised, Vientiane is a wonderfullly chilled out city with a huge french influence. There is little to do but eat very good food and chat to monks which after Hanoi and our 20 hour bus ride, suited us perfectly. We went to the beautiful Pha That Luang temple which is the most important monument in Laos and met some incredible young monks, where we chated about a range of random things from football to praying. It was an enlightening experience!
After 2 nights of recovery we got back on a bus this time a 3 hour bus ride to the village of Vang Vieng which is famous for tubing. During our time in Vietnam we had seen countless people sporting "Tubing in Vang Vieng" vests, so we thought we would give it a go and see what all the fuss was about. The aim of the game is to travel down the river in a tractor inner tube whilst people along the river attempt to haul you into one of their bars by throwing rope at you as you float by. However, what they don't tell you is that the rivers current is so strong that people have drowned and the river is littered with rocks that are not visible to you as you go downstream. After renting 2 tractor inner tubes with 4 other people and getting a tuk tuk up to the launch point we were good to go. Having seen for ourselves the river with numerous rocks, the ridiculoulsly fast flowing current and the fact that it was pouring down with rain we knew that getting sloshed was not a good idea. We got to the 3rd bar before we called it quits not before Marky cut his leg and foot on rocks and not before being fed up of seeing loads of stupidly hammered people acting like wollies. It was not an enjoyable experience. This place was a classic example of how Western tourism can completely spoil a beautiful area. The worst thing about it all was we met people who had been tubing for their entire time in Laos. One lad had tubed for 200 days on the trot and had therefore not seen anything of this incredible country.
We got out of Vang Vieng as quickly as we arrived and got on yet another bus (bit of a recurring theme here) for a further 7 hours to get to the world heritage city of Luang Prabang.