The Land of the Wholehearted People - well beerlao is the beer of the wholehearted people so I shall take this as gospel truth. My emerging beer appreciation/belly is testament to that. We made it to Lao with suprisingly little hassle. Despite the stressful journey from Halong Bay to get the bus in the first place we made it to the border in time and then made the full journey in just under 22 hours. Drop in the ocean! We had heard horror stories of the bus running over so we were pretty happy. Got off the bus with four other girls and got a hostel with them in Vientiane.

Vientiane is the capital so since we had reached a point where we had gone through Vietnam so quickly we had stayed in 16 beds in 17 nights we figured we would stay in the capital for a while. Two hours after arriving we booked ourselves a bus for the next day heading north! Its an okay kind of place but we dont think we missed out on anything by not sticking around.

And so we found ourselves in Vang Vien and WHAT a town! It has essentially evolved as a place for tourists to get drunk and consequently has all the infrastructure to deal with hangovers. Hangover we did not have but major travelling fatigue we did so a day spent drinking fruit shakes, lying on cusions in a 'friends' bar was exactly what we needed. Basically most of the bars in town either show Friends, Family Guy or the Simpsons and all of them have the box sets which means the episodes play back to back almost 24 hours a day.

Also the most amazing baguettes are sold in little stalls on the street. Cheese! The first cheese we have had in asia and as a major food group of mine and alex's we were pretty excited by this find. So excited in fact that when we discovered that some stalls use cheddar and some use laughing cow we would go up to each stall in turn and ask what type of cheese they use before ordering (cheddar being the superior choice naturally).

The other thing which Vang Vien is famous for is tubing. Hire a giant rubber ring for a day (think lazy river in a Disney water park) and get taken up stream in the Mekong. At the start of the tubing area there are loads of bamboo bars lining the river with giant swings, zip wires and slides which are amazing fun! The addition of a few buckets of laolao whisky and red bull also helps the fun. We had heard some baaaad stories though, and seen lots of bandages around town, so didnt drink as much as I recon it would be easy to do. The last bit of the river has no bars so a 2km float down to the end is amazing. We had spent the day with another couple so the four of us linked feet and floated away together.

It was also one of those weird towns which everyone passes through and is so small you actually then bump into said people. We watched the England vs Germany match with the couple we had seen the England vs Algeria game with in Hanoi, Vietnam; loads of the people from the Halong Bay trip were seen and people you spent the night with in Vang Vien you then saw every other day.

We stayed in Vang Vien doing not a huge amount for five nights in total doing not alot before catching the 7 hour bus designed for 5 foot passengers. Not comfy! But we found ourselves in Luang Prabang with a group of six of us. Halfway to LP we discovered that despite starting the day with my purse - 300,000kip (30quid) and my bank card - we did not have it any more. Still in the process of sorting this so decided that a night out was not quite for us and after a cheap cheap dinner and a wander around we hit the sack ready to explore our little hearts out tomorrow. Plus the night market looks A-mazing. Might be time in the trip to get some souveniers!