OK, this picture isn't Vang Vieng but we haven't got any on the site yet and I liked it!

We left Luang Prabang on the 15th and headed south to Vang Vieng, an uncomfortable five hour minivan journey. The journey was not only uncomfortable because we were not allowed air conditioning, but also because it was mostly through the mountains, so for five hours we were thrown from side to side as our driver sped through the mountains with sheer drops to the side of us, and yes, you guessed it, this didn't stop him from overtaking! A few times he took corners a little too fast and you could feel we were close to a skid, but even more worrying at times it looked like he was nodding off, although in the end we worked out he was checking the engine temperature as it kept overheating.

To make things worse still, as you drive through the mountains passing small towns on the way, there are young men waiting by the sides of the road with rifles, and every now and then they stop the van, I think for a small bribe. Our driver gave a lad who looked about 16 with a gun some cash we think, and another driver handed over a few cigarettes. A little worrying as a few years ago on the infamous Route 13, a tourist bus was boarded by some guerillas and some people killed (including some tourists), not to mention a lot of people are stoned on opium up in the hills of Laos.  Still, the British Embassy says it's safe, and if you can't trust your government who can you trust?!  Hmmm.

Laos has the dubious honour of being the most bombed country in history. There are still many areas of the country, mainly in the east and in the north-east that are dangerous to walk through due to many remaining landmines, and it is not uncommon for farmers, their families, and their livestock to tread on an old, yet still active mine.  One of the main features of Vang Vieng in fact is a long and mostly unused airfield runway parallel to the river, which was used during the Vietnam War by American planes.

Now however, Vang Vieng has been turned into a backpacker town, as it's a great place to go inner tubing down the Nam Song River. 

Inner tubing is where you sit inside (on top or however you fancy) a tractor inner tube and float down a river.  The great thing about doing this in Vang Vieng is that there are loads of places selling beer along the 2 or 3km stretch of river....who says beer and watersports don't mix.  It also has flying foxes and trapezes along the route.

After a short tuk-tuk ride up river, we jumped in at about 12.30pm with four others that we'd been travelling with since arriving in Laos, only to find our worst fears realised....the river is in fact full of turds!  Nobody else seemed to notice this except for Rich though, and everyone tried to claim it was moss and bark, but after scooping some 'bark' up in his hand Rich begged to differ.

When we say it was full of turds, you could pretty much see at least one turd within reach of your tube all day, and most of the time more than one.  As Rich did his one and only flying fox, you could see him counting turds as he flew through the air, or maybe he was just trying to avoid landing in them!

At about 1pm we stopped for our first Beer Laos of the day, and being Laos New Year still there was a huge party going on and drunk Laos people everywhere.  There was also a huge trapeze which started off about 40 feet or more high, though we left this one to John from Bolton to try out (have we mentioned Rich's vertigo?).  

As we left the first bar Rich forgot that the inner tube had a large metal nozzle for pumping it up, and as he jumped in managed to scrape all his back up, but apart from that tubing was great fun, and time really does fly as we checked our watch about half way (and a few Beer Laos) down and realised it was nearly 5pm. 

As the tubes had to be back by 7pm (and it gets dark at 6.30pm), we floated off down river (singing our new favourite tune Kop Chai Ly Ly, which means thank you very much in Laos to the tune of ............) , making it back in at about 6.45pm.  Unfortunately our dry bag had not lived up to it's name and our clothes were drenched and dirty.

Next day we left Nana's Guesthouse for Vientiane, the capital of Laos.