well, its 30th of Jan, we are due to fly from phenom phen, to Vientiane this morning, but me being a massive English fool stayed up drinking and smoking all night, so with about a hour sleep we are running very late as both me and robin over slept!

the only way to make it to the airport in time is to make a life or airport decision,
do we motorbike it there?

well of course we do, both with massive 15k backpacks we dart in and out of the morning rush hour traffic, hung over and hanging on for life, i almost s*** myself for the 1st time this year (for the record, I'm on a clean start so far and its 2 months in, arnt you proud mother!)

so we make it in time, and clean pants (well I'm clean cant talk for robin?) airoplane is a tiny little number with propellers either side.... about 50 people or so on it as far as i can remember... but 2 hours and we land in 3rd world Laos, much poorer than Thailand etc etc but a nice city. the whole of Laos only has ONE A.T.M, that's one cash point to feed a massive country! that's how poor it is. and it has a massive lizard out side a shop!

capital is a bit boring, not much to do or see, although did have some very nice street ribs! booked bus for next day.

wake up, 10 MINS TILL BUS LEAVES b*****......... very very hung over, we get a bus down to vang vieng for the world renowned TUBEING! WHOOP!

Vang vieang is a stunning little town, very one horse, buy that i mean theres nout there other than a collection of bars playing Friends and Simpson's all day, and some lame restaurants ( that couldn't cook a jacket potato to save the life's of there family! i mean how hard is it! :)

view from our hotel was stunning, looked over the river with bamboo bridges crossing in to the rolling landscape of breath taking mountain range, this place really was a stunner for that!

that night, looking for a bar with more than 2 people watching homer Simpson scratching his balls we found some thing special...... J.D's bar.

now J.D was a OD one, kamikaze bandanna wrapped around his head, and sweaty massive smile that could charm Hitler, and the most happening bar in Laos, complete with 1/2 kello mushroom vodka buckets, opium joints, and weed on tab, this guy was always waisted, later int he week telling me he drinks half a bottle a day of this rice wine,

J.D life expectancy, maybe one more year, get there fast!

so we smoked some opium, drank some free buckets (j.d was to pissed to remember to charge us, although we tyred forcing money in his face about 9 times) smoked some weed, then hit the hotel roof to look at the mountains.
robin and i where wondering if the opium was any good? as we didnt really feel anymore wrecked that we should of done just drinking and smoking..... after a 30 min chat about weather GOD is real we decide that it did work and we should go to bed!!!!! funny s***.

next day its tubing time! we get driven 4k up river with a massive tractor inner tube, and dropped off, the basic jist is that you float at a very slow speed down the river in these tubes, very chilled and relaxing and peaceful, f***ing lovely man, Then someone decided to ad 2 massive bars on the way, with 12 meter rope swings!!! so you get pulled in from the river by some little guy and a massive rod of Bamboo, you get yourself a nice chilled beer, you climb a 12 meter bambo construction, pray and leap of it holding on to some rope! what a buzz it was wicked, robin on the other hand loved it untill he dislocated his solder, the end of his swinging (from rope anyway)
also had a few zip lines that rocked to. but by the end we where cold and pissed so we managed to find some p.e teacher from Canada who took it upon herself to get int o the river and push us army style to where to tuk tuks where! brilliant!

back to J.D;s house of fun for more carnage and off to a party that got shut down by undercover police!

after a few more days chilling and partying with the big guy J.d, we head off to luang prabang so we can catch a 2 day boat up the mea kong river to the thai border, on the coach to luang prabang we had a blow out on one of the tires. a bit dodgy as we where gunning round jungle mountain roads!

river trip was cool, saw a lot of cool things, monks bathing in river, small little community's that are almost completely cut off from the out side world other than the river, really chilled, meet some nice people on the way to. photos will best discribe when they go up, but of corse, on the second day, we miss the thai border by like ten Min's, but " its ok, there are some guest houses here for you" hmmmmmm

so that night, we eat dinner and look across the mea kong river to the briht lights of the promised land THAILAND