Date: 22nd May 2011

Place: On a bus but eventually Vang Vieng, Laos

Weather: super super hot and sunny

I managed to get a little bit of sleep before being taken into a shop where they would sort out our Laos Visas and then gave us our 'VIP' breakfast of a ham and egg toastie with a fly on the side. Thai and Laos people really know how to do things slowly. We were in the Visa place for about an hour and a half and then we took a 2 minute journey down the road to the border crossing where we had to get off to depart from Thailand and then get back on the bus, and then get off again to get into Laos. It was such a mission.

It wasn't over yet though. When we crossed the border we were put on a Tuk Tuk and taken to a travel shop where we had to wait for about another hour. Then we were put onto a minibus and taken to a coach where we had to wait some more for everyone to show up. I think we eventually got going about 4 hours after we got off the first minibus. And the new coach was packed full and hot!

This journey thankfully had a film to watch though; 2012. It was nice to have a distraction from the roads and the way they drive out here. I was heading to Vang Vieng to go Tubing, during which many people die each year, but I thought I was going to die even before I got there. We finally did arrive though and we were next to some random hotel just on the outside of town.

We decided to walk it into the centre, by the time we got there we were dripping with sweat. After eventually finding a decent enough Guesthouse, and drawing out 1,000,000kip (I felt like a millionaire) from the cashpoint, we crashed out on the beds for about 5 hours.

When we finally woke up we got dressed and head out to find something to eat. Carm and Siobhan were feeling a bit sick, we thought it was travel sickness but it turned out we all had a bit of a bad feeling for a few days afterwards, so we didn't go to somewhere to eat and I just got a sandwich from a street stall. This was our first sight of Vang Vieng night life though and it was dead. We thought maybe everyone had crashed out from tubing and then would come out later, well we hoped that anyway.