Luang Prabang onto Vang Vieng

So Friday, expectantly was a bit of a write-off. Lauren got up before me and went out for breakfast while I stayed in bed and had a chat to Nick (which was ridiculous early hours in the morning time to him). Then by the time I got up it was afternoon so we went out and I got a nice pizza from across the road. The girls had invited us to their hostel as it had a pool but it was the hostel Lauren and I had vowed to never return to and also we were both tired so just went back to our room where Lauren had a nap and I chilled in the courtyard reading for a bit.

Later on, Lauren and I met Bianca and Will to watch a Laos ballet show at the Royal theatre. It was an hour and a half long and was very different to the ballet we know, it was slow with precise angled hand and foot movements. I was glad I knew the story of what the first dance which lasted 45 minutes was (the story of Rama and Sita) which I had to later explain to the others as they admitted to not having understood what it was about. The next 45 minutes was smaller dances, one of which was them all dressed as monkeys. I felt like one of the dances with their costumes looked very similar to the power rangers as they had helmets on and shiny material with pointed up shoulders. After it finished, the others came and met with us and we went for some street food before having a wander around the night market and getting an early night.

Saturday

We both got up early expecting to be picked up at 9am for our 5 hour bus to Vang Vieng. The bus man didn't turn up until 9.45 and we trekked down the road with our bags to find he was cramming us in. It was then even more surprising to find he still had another 4 people to pick up and we laughed with the others in the tuk tuk and the way in Asia they can be so inefficient with timing yet efficient in making sure they make the most money they can by squashing everyone in everywhere all the time. We were transferred to a minibus and I sat in the front next to the driver with Lauren next to the window. It was beautiful views and I stayed awake the whole trip as I didn't have a head rest to lean back on and kept getting knocked by the gear stick as I was trying to write up some of my blog. We stopped for some lunch and then Lauren swapped with me for the last hour as shed burnt her arm which had been outside the window. Overall the journey only took 4 and a half hours including or stop off break and we arrived in Vang Vieng where we pottered around to look for a nice riverside bungalow we'd read about in the lonely planet book. Unfortunately the place we'd picked out was fully booked, but we bumped into a girl who was asking us for advice in our book on where she as one person could get a good value hostel and then suggested a place for us where she'd just been to that was nice but that she couldn't afford. We took her advice and went to check the place out, it wasn't a bungalow but was called 'Riverside backpackers' which were charging 70,000 kip a night for us to share a private room. We looked at the room before agreeing and were really happy to see it had a TV as at this point it's been nearly 4 weeks since we've seen anything in English.

We then found a few bars that were playing repeat episodes of Friends in, so we went and had dinner there and then met Pat who had travelled to Vang Vieng the day before and his friend Dylan who had been ill the night we met Pat out, along with two girls from the Netherlands who were from their hostel. After one beer I was really tired so they all walked me back to the room and after I was excited there was an English movie channel, I'd forgotten it was Halloween. Lauren headed back out with them to go and watch the Australian V New Zealand rugby game as I got settled in the room nervously with a horror film on. I instead decided to distract myself by making a couple of phone calls home, and then went to sleep.