Transport curse strikes once again on the road to Vang Vieng!! Setting off just before 9:30am the journey was possibly the most horrendous ever. I thought the road to Pai was bad, I take it all back!! Sitting in the mini bus was like being inside a tumble dryer, or so I imagine. Hours must have passed and I kept hoping and praying that round the next bumpy twist and turn would be the smooth tarmac of the motorway. Of course, this never arrived. The roads became narrower and if possible, worse than before as we headed into the mountains. At approximately 1pm that day I thought my life was over. Earlier that morning a huge landslide had occured on the one and only road to anywhere, we came to an abrupt holt. We were literally stranded in the middle of nowhere, no shops, no phones, no hope. Afew guys from our mini bus left to see what all the fuss was about as at this stage we were still blissfully unaware of the landslide. They returned to deliver the news that approximately 200m, maybe more, of road was covered in thick mud, rock and debris which had fallen from the mountain due to heavy rain and that there were currently 3 diggers trying to clear the stretch of road. By 6pm we were still stationary however, vehicles had started to pass us from the other side of the landslide. We were informed that 100 vehicles would pass then it was our turn. Over an hour later we still hadn't moved!! We arrivied in Vang Vieng at 1am after what should have been a 5hour journey. Next morning, over our ordeal of the previous day, it's Saturday and what better way to spend the day than Tubing!! Yes it's highly dangerous and yes peple do die but what the hell there literally isn't anything else to do in Vang Vieng!! (For those who don't know, Tubing is basically where you get full of drink on a river and float around in a rubber ring. Simple.) We spend the morning buying t-shirts, a waterproof pouch which isnt actually waterproof and go for food. Vang Vieng basically consists of cafe after cafe, all the same style, bean bags, cushions, comfy chairs and constant re-runs of FRIENDS. Apprantly it's not cool to go Tubing too early in the day so not wanting to look too eager we head to the river about 1:30pm. The first bar is already packed. We take the boat across , down whiskey from a bottle, get spraypainted with stars and are given a coloured string bracelet which apparantly entitles us to free drinks at somewhere or other later that night. Clearly no-one ever claims these drinks as everyone is too PCR to remember. Good start. Afew buckets of gin later we bump into people weve been crossing paths with for a while now, which is to be expected as everyone does the same sort of route. Having chosen not to get rubber rings we hi-jack those of our new found friends and hitch a ride down the river. The current is actually much stronger than I imagined so it's quite easy to be swept away and not make it to every bar. Arriving at the 5th (ish) bar it was beginning to get dark and weve been warned not to stay on the river after dark. We ignore this. Uh oh. We get back into the river and hope were not about to become "those people you hear about who've died Tubing." It's really not obvius where you're actually supposed to get out of the river so earlier in the day we walked to the point closest to our guesthouse and memorised some lime green bungalows opposite however, lime green bungalows aren't so obvious when you're full of gin being swept down a river in the pitch black!! After flaoting forever we decided we most definately had gone too far so scrambled towards anywhere which looked like a way out. We hadn't actually gone too far to the delight of a tuk tuk driver who pulled us ashore and was more than happy to take us back to where we were staying. Like drowned rats we head out for the night, yes still in bikins and try to forget our looming 30 hour bus journey to Cambodia the next day...