It was another early start to travel to Vang Vieng. We were up at 6am to leave at 6.30 and make a quick stop to get a fruit shake, which are my new favourite drink in Asia. There was a bit of confusion about the bus pick up time and location so after waiting a while and being told we wouldn't be stopping for four hours me and Rosie ran back to the market to get a banana and Nutella crepe.

So we started on the bus journey and were offered two routes, the old road which took 6 hours and we would stop twice or the new road which wouldn't stop but would take 4 hours. So we all voted for the new road. Well the road was only part finished and at one point it was totally being dug up and I thought we would have to turn around but instead eh bus driver carried on avoiding the diggers and the workers to continue on the road. The road went up to the top of the mountains at some points and was so foggy I don't know how the driver could see a thing.

We arrived in Vang Vieng and went for lunch. The main restaurants were right on the river and all showed old reruns of tv shows such as South Park, friends and how i met your mother so we all are lunch together (11 of us) and chilled out. Vang Vieng is famous for backpackers wanting to go tubing on the river. You sit in a tube and float down the river whilst stopping off at bars on the way. A lot of people died tubing as they would get so drunk and jump off a cliff into shallow water that they would really injure themselves and die. So now a lot of the bars have closed or been set a lot further back than the river. The weather wasn't great so I decided not to go tubing but went for a Laos massage with Rosie and Laura instead. For an hours massage it cost just under £3.50 and I use the term massage loosely. I paid my money to allow a Laos woman to beat me up! She pulled me in all directions, cracked my back and hit me a lot. Parts of the massage were relaxing and other parts I wanted to scream out in pain. I definitely think I would do it again though.

After the massage we all got ready to go out for tea and a few drinks, Vang Vieng is definitely a little town there for backpackers to drink a lot, eat hangover food and watch hangover telly.

The next day on our way to the capital Vientiane we stopped off at one of the caves in Vang Vieng. There were 149 steps up to the cave and the steps were steep. Plus so many Chinese and Korean tourists it felt like you were doing a lot more steps to dodge all of them walking up and down the steps. The cave itself was amazing. The views were incredible and the cave was lit up in sections so you could see it well. Boun (our guide - he told me how to spell his name yesterday) explained to us that the cave was used to hide people in the Vietnam war and protect them from the bombs. So we then took the steps back down where we hopped back on the bus and made the very bumpy journey to the capital of Laos.