I arrived in Vang Vieng yesterday afternoon and can honestly say it is just as described. Natural beauty all around the town but that doesn't seem to be what people have come here for. The town itself, littered with bars all playing tapes of Friends, South Park and Family guy with half yawning back packers munching through noodles in the afternoon. This was going to be just as I expected it to be, I was hoping I could return to being my party animal former self...I had also heard that Karaoke was something of a national sport in Lao and believed it rightly so when I walked past a salon to see 5 women drinking beer and singing away!

The first night saw me heading over the river to Bucket bar. It is as it sounds...for 50,000 kip you can get a little plastic bucket full of Lao Whiskey and coke with a couple of straws. I bumped into Shelley and Darren again and after a couple of these buckets we were up dancing centre stage till 3 am with an Aussie guy called Dan who has some rather strange dancing ideas! In the UK at this time the kebab houses open and they have it right here too as I munched into a bacon burger before getting some sleep. Tomorrow was going to be a long day of Tubing. (Google it).

Waking up rather late I felt bad that I had failed to meet Orfir and Jessica this morning for Tubing however...they hadn't gone yet so we all went together. It was so much fun! Sitting by the side of the Nam Song in the sun drinking and floating down river. I will admit that it was probably back flipping into the river from a zip line which did my shoulder in...but at the time I didn't care. I'd jumped from platforms into that river, had shapes spray painted onto my body and had a head band to rival the Karate kid. It was a good day.

I will however, stipulate, I couldn't do this every day and I understand how quickly people get injured or even die out here. We met a guy who'd been here for 6 months doing the same thing every day and he told us about a guy who died 3 days before we arrived.

I wanted to go rock climbing in Vang Vieng but being a solo traveller it was rather expensive so I have decided to move on to Vientiane tomorrow where I will do any admin before heading down to Si Phan Don (4000 islands).