Judith Here!

Well we jumped on the only bus available from Luang Prabang up to Vang Vieng (VV), the 'stupid, useless piece of?' the lonely planet says it takes 9 hours to get to VV, so we get lots of snacks and food for the journey and head down to the bus station, the only bus there was the local bus, no aircon, fab eh!The guy behind the counter lies to me?yeah he lied and says that the journey was only 6 hours and would get us there for 9.30, so when I've eaten all my food at 8.30 and someone asks where we are I answer only about an hour away, then to be told actually it was 9 hours after all?I've no food damn stupid Laos man behind the sodding counter.

Anyway all in all it wasn't that bad a journey, the views are fantastic up in the mountains and you pass loads of little villages where they live in huts and have the most simple lives. A scary point was a guy getting on the bus with a huge gun, Aaron was tempted to ask for a picture with it, I would have actually paid to see that picture but the scared little mite kept his mouth shut and stayed on his seat! Thank god! I really did want my picture with that gun so much but i knew the gun would have pointed at me in the same fashion it was pointed at some wilderbeast earlier that day.

VV isn't all that much, a tiny little town with not an awful lot to do but someone had this awesome idea to build bars on the river with swings and there you go a readymade tourist attraction GENIUS, with lots of bars with pillows and friends playing, you can literally sit there all day and watch series after series, eat pizza and drink fruit shakes, we spent a whole day lazing about, watching friends after swearing we weren't going to get sucked into it! I don't think Jack was too impressed when after telling her we are not sitting here watching friends all day, i was the first to get hooked on my first bit of telly for over a month.

Tuesday we went Tubing, you've all probably heard about Aaron going on and on and on about this but it was the highlight of the week of VV at least.We hired our tubes and dry bag (loads of frigging use that was by the way) and got onto our tuk tuk for the 20 minute journey to the river. I wasn't all that fussed on sitting with my butt in water for 5 hours but you know me, go along with it and all that, I wasn't impressed on realizing that after asking for a lifejacket I didn't actually get one, but there I was getting onto my tube and going with the flow (of the river)So you float along and there are bars dotted along the way with Laotians sticking bamboo sticks out to drag you in, you park your tube, buy a beer and contemplate the rope swing or zip line that's ready for use at the bar. When your finished you get on your tube and float along to the next bar and so on. All along the way though the zip lines get higher as you get more drunk, all men start being heroes and doing back flips ad stuff, all lots of fun I have still yet to develop the courage or the co-ordination to pull this off so i just jumped in and hoped for the best with all the grace and flair of a drowning donkey, I didn't do any of the jumps (don't like water in my face) so I stayed on dryish land and drank an awful lot of beer and buckets!

One of the bars had a 'bridge' made of two sticks of bamboo, Jones decides to cross it, carefully balancing all the way, he deserved a medal for crossing it, I on the other hand along with everyone else decided to paddle across, in the throw of this I lost my flip flop in the mud and shouted for Jones to come and help me as I was being swept away by the current, so in true Aaron style he slides on his backside allllll the way down to me knocking me over in the process, cheers Jones! Indiana Jones to the rescue againAfter regaining my composure we went to the bar, now I cant remember why Aaron was jumping about on an empty bamboo stage on stilts like a loon, but he was, and it wasn't very long before his feet were dangling through the stage much to the disappointment of the Laos lady watching him telling him to stop stomping on it, he fell taking a shade umbrella with him. Once back on his clod feet he stomps over to dry land, thus making more holes in the lovely stage on the way, we made a sharp exit from that bar I tell you! It wasn't a lovley stage it was very rickety and she wasn't shouting at me i think she was trying apologise for her husbands shoddy workmanship and she had a genuine concern for my wellbeing unlike you as you sat there pissing your pants, cheers mate.

The last bar we get to we are told to start making our way to the 'island' where you give your tubes back as the sun was setting, so we do as were told for once and get on our tubes, not sure if its because I light but my tube didn't go as fast as everyone elses and I ended up on the River with Yvonne, in the pitch black, hhhmmmm scary. At last there was help a Lao man on a canoe shouting 'do you need help' Yeesss' we squealed back, much to our disappointment he just laughed loudly and carried on past us, it was at this point we panicked and tried to go faster. After a horrific hour being LAR (Lost at river) we heard the screams of our friends shouting us from dry land, tears of joy were about to pop out of my eyes when a local just paddled up to the tube, we could have paddled, we were only waist deep! After that we went from feeling like heroes to feeling like prats!

What a day, we all had a victorious Pizza meal still sopping wet and were kicked out of the bar at 11pm, gang of bores. Yep no chance of any stay behinds here.