On Tuesday 24th we went tubing in the Nam Song River with the couple we met on the way down from Luang Prabang. To tube the river, you have to each pay 55,000 kip (about £4.50) plus a 60,000 kip deposit. You are then driven 4km upstream and dumped by the roadside with a bright yellow rubber ring tucked under your arm. Most people buy a drink at the first bar before they even get their feet wet (guilty) then jump into their rings and head down the river. It is not long before plastic bottles on ropes are being lobbed at you. If you hold onto a bottle you are dragged into the next bar for more drinks before jumping back into the river, where someone else throws a rope out to you, and so on and so forth. It is cheapest to drink tiger whisky, coke and red bull buckets (generally around £1.25 for the equivalent of four drinks) so naturally everyone does this and gets wasted. Free shots are available at a lot of the bars but after the first couple we steered clear, they were rotten!

I think there are about 10 bars in the first kilometre or so and most of them have either a zipwire or a slide to keep people entertained. We heard there used to be rope swings too but these were mostly removed after people kept swinging into rocks or shallow water. Despite the removal of the swings it's still fairly dangerous on the river. We saw people wind themselves, cut themselves, bruise themselves, somersault dangerously close to rocks, land just 2 inches short of a canoe, fall over, pass out etc etc - and they were the lucky ones; we heard that two Australian tourists actually died this month, which is a very sobering thought.

We crawled out of the water at the 1k mark, once we realised there was no way we would make the final 3km in the 40 minutes left before we would lose our deposit, or even before nightfall. We broke briefly for a shower and some food then went out for more buckets.

The next day we did nothing. Zero. Zilch. Unless you count eating and laying around. It felt like a lazy Sunday, especially as all the restaurants play hangover-friendly episodes of 'Friends' and 'Family Guy' all day long.

Yesterday we went tubing again, determined to make it all the way to the end of the 4km track this time. We managed 2km (boo!) but did have a fun time celebrating 'Australia Day' with three Aussies and a Mexican. At one point I was a complete prize idiot and dropped my camera in the rapids whilst spinning around a cute Lao kid. Thankfully, after around 20 minutes of searching, we spotted it lying at the bottom of the riverbed, unharmed. Phew. The second kilometre of the river was much more scenic and peaceful than the first and as we were floating along we spotted two hot air balloons scudding along above us. This led to a slightly inebriated decision to withdraw over a million kip (about £80) from the ATM once we got back to town and book up a balloon ride for the next morning.

This did not seem like a good idea when the alarm went off at 6am but once we were up in the air it seemed like a brilliant one! We could see for miles: mountains and fields and rivers stretched out below us. In the distance there was what looked like a witch's cauldron but in reality was very dense cloud swirling in between two mountain ranges. It looked like another world. Unfortunately my camera, perhaps still irritated at being dropped so carelessly by me yesterday, failed to capture the beauty of the view and, once we got to 500m or so completely fogged up behind the lens. By 750m it was useless! It was cold but the fire raging above us stopped us from feeling it too much. We were up in the air for 40 minutes before landing gently in a cow field, surrounded by steaming cow pats. Talk about coming back to earth with a bump.

After our balloon ride we bolted down baguettes before catching a minivan down to Vientiane, the capital of Laos. The 4 hour journey was bumpy in parts, where the road was unsealed, but otherwise fine - and much, much better than the journey from Luang Prabang to Vang Vieng. All we have done so far is eat here so not sure what we will think of Vientiane but we shall see!