Howdy!

So we left Luang Prabang on Monday evening for Vang Vieng....which meant we had to embrace another journey on the joyous Laos buses! The journey was meant to take 6hrs, so obviously it took 10hrs instead, but the best thing about the whole journey was the bus itself - it was like a luxury limosine compared to the last one! It was something straight out of 1998 with curtains and material on the seats (as opposed to the lovely faux leather stuff) but the best part was by far the fact that there wasn't a kiddies plastic stool insight! Bonus! The journey was much more pleasurable than the last (but this does not mean it was in any way good!) We met some nice peeps on the bus and spent our time in Vang Vieng them. We're staying in a place called Riverside Bungalows, and we have a little bamboo cabin each - is all very pleasant, but it's very much like being back to nature and there are a fair few creepy crawlies around!

Yesterday the sun shone and we all went tubing - essentially this is when you sit in a large rubber ring and float down the river while people pull you into bars on the sides. The bars all overlook the river and have different swings and ziplines over the river, and some have activities like volleyball and mudwrestling in them etc. It was a lot of fun however it did go a little wrong at first and we had to go down the river twice as we all got split up - most of us got stuck in the reeds at the side except for Laura who managed to get herself in the middle of the current and went wizzing off downsteam! She managed to pull herself onto a bamboo raft until the rest of us came along, but her rubber ring was a casualty and got lost in the river, so we had to steal a new one (or incur a 200,000kip fine) The second time we went down was much more of a success and we leant to go with the crowd to the busy bars and not get too eager to move on! The tubing experience was really fun and we even have the t-shirts (along with a few cuts and bruises) to prove it! We went on a night out after and met an array of 'interesting' people, including a guy from Florida who now lives in Hong Kong and insisted that when he did the jungle trek in Chiang Mai, he ate wild cat for breakfast....even though everybody else who has done a trek all had toast!

Today we went to some caves...they were ok but we didn't really know too much about them so just made up our own history instead. Rich seemed to enjoy them, but us girls were left distinctly unimpressed! We leave tomorrow for Vientiene (another bus journey but this one is only 3 hours but we just assume it will be about 6hrs this time!) We have a day in Vientiene and then fly to Vietnam (def the safer option instead of the 29hr bus journey, especially given out track record with Laos buses!) Laos has been a lot of fun but we realy do get ripped by not being native to the country....today at the caves they had an entry price for Laotians (5000kip) and an entry price for us 'foreigners' (15000kip) - charming huh?!

Anywho, we hope things are wonderful with with you all. Love you lots and will be updating again soon! Much love xxxxxxxxxxxx