We arrived close to the border with Thailand and Laos at around 5 am and stopped off at a cafe for about an hour so that the bus company could check our passports and give us the relevant paperwork required to cross in to Laos and also to get a visa. As we were so early I did manage to get a few pictures of the sunrise over the Mekon river while I was waiting around.

The border crossing was pain free and it cost $31 to get a visa ($1 because it was before 8am for as they put it "overtime") for a British citizen, other nationalities paid varying amounts up to about $45.

At this point we met up with a bus that had come in to Laos with the same company, but from Chiang Mai in Thailand, and we all got on a Laos bus and headed over to the capital Vientiene. On the bus I got talking to 4 Irish guys from Cork who were also going to Vang Vieng but had bought there bus tickets all the way there, mine stopped at the capital. So I had a word with the driver who quickly took some cash of me and gave me a ticket from Vientiene to Vang Vieng. Arriving Vientienne the 4 Irish guys and myself were dropped outside a hotel and told to wait there for nearly 2 hours until 10am to get the bus to Vang Vieng. So we waited and grabbed some breakfast and also found an ATM to get some local currency......woo hoo, I am a millionaire!!!! I drew out 1 million Laos KIP (about £100).

At about 09:45 a tuk-tuk driver turned up at the hotel where we were waiting saying he was looking for 1 person going to Vang Vieng, I showed him my ticket and he said, “yes, you come with me”, I looked at the Irish guys and said this is strange, but I went with this driver anyway. He took me off to another part of the city and I was started to wonder where I was going, but he stopped at another hotel and picked up an Australian couple. This kind of set my mind at rest and we were dropped off at the bus station and told to “wait there!” as he was going off to pick up some more people and come back in 15 minutes.

So we waited and waited and he didn't show. It was now 10:45 and he should have been back at around 10:15, so we decided to go over to where a big group of tourists were gathering to get on a bus to find out where it was going and whether we could get on it. The driver said we could and quickly grabbed our bags and boarded. I am not sure if we missed the tuk-tuk driver coming back or whether he never came back for us, but we still managed to get on the right bus.

At the half way stop off we all got off the bus to get some food and drinks and who did I see, but the 4 Irish guys that I had left behind at the hotel. The 10am bus had turned up for them which was full and they expected them to sit on stools in the aisle for 4 hours, so they said that they wouldn’t so they had been dropped off at the bus station and told to get the next bus at 11am, which was also my bus.

I arrived in Vang Vieng at around 3pm and I had forgotten to take down the address of the hostel or even to look at a map to see how far away it was, so I asked a tuk-tuk driver if he knew where it was and agreed a price. I got checked in, dropped off my bag and immediately got asked by the people in the hostel if I would like to go tubing (without a tube) with them as they were just about to leave. I asked what I needed to take and they said just wear your swimming stuff and take some money.

Arriving at the river was a complete shock, it was not at all what I expected. It was basically a row of 5 or 6 bars alongside the river playing loud music and offering cheap drinks, free shots of LaosLaos (local whiskey), and buckets of spirits and mixers. It was quiet weird getting there sober, so we quickly got stuck in. I won’t explain what it’s like here as I have a load of pictures that I will put up tomorrow.

At around 6pm we took a tuk-tuk from the river back to our hostel, and every Monday, Wednesday and Friday it had an outside sauna going, so we were straight in there for a sauna and a dip in their plunge pool. After the sauna and when everyone was change we headed out to the Q Bar and carried on drinking and I even managed to play some pool, but very badly.

It go to the point in the night where I was starting to feel like I had had too much to drink, not enough to eat and definitely not enough sleep for 2 days, so I decided to head back to the hostel. My only problem was that I had no idea where I was and not even the slightest idea of which way to walk back to the hostel. So I asked someone for directions and eventually made it back meeting up with a few others that were sitting around in the common area. Now this bit is a slight blurr, but apparently I did sit up for a while chatting before going to bed, but I can’t remember this.