Vang Vieng: Getting to this city was a bit of a nightmare as we had to wait 4 hours at the deserted bus station for the bus. They had last-minute just cancelled ours & the next one was then late (on the relaxed Laos schedule). We ended up with a flat tire which delayed us significantly. On arrival, the bus then dropped us off ~4km from the main hotel area at 1AM & all 10 of us had to find our way to accomodations as all the Tuk Tuk's were finished for the day (the one time you need them & they're not there but any other time they drive you nuts offering rides). Cities tend to die off at about 10PM in Laos with noone to be seen anywhere. When we finally arrived to town, there were a few guesthouses open but most were full. We ended up having to wake up the workers, who have their beds beside the reception desk for us late-comers until we finally found one with available rooms. This took approx. 1 hour at 1AM. The rooms were horrible but we just wanted a bed so found better ones the next day.

Vang Vieng was definately a very tourist-oriented city but it was definately a lot of fun. The highlight of this city would definately be the tubing on the Mekong river. I did a tour, where I met a bunch of great people & we went caving, trekking & then for some river tubing. The tubing consists of inner tubes that you sit it & just float downstream. There are many bars along the way & the locals throw a rope out to you to pull you into the bar where you have a few drinks & shots of Lao Lao (local whisky). The bars are all quite busy & people go up & down the river drinking all day long. Even more fun was the ~ 10m swings that you hold onto & jump into the water below. The city itself consisted of tons of restaurants that played episodes of 'Friends' or 'Family Guy' all day long. Andrew(guy I met in Pai/Chiang Mai and had been bumping into each other regularly) and I ended up hanging out in these places for most of a day as it poured rain and was cold. On my last night there, we had a 'Canadian' reunion with a few of us that had done the Chiang Mai trek together as we all happened to be in the city...we had a great time but I decided to move on through Laos rather than go tubing with them the next day.