The minibus to Vang Vieng took 8hrs instead of 5, oh well kind of used to this now!

Vang Vieng has everything you could possibly want, trekking, caving, rock climbing, canoing, blue lagoons for swimming, loads of lounging/hangover bars showing endless episodes of friends, simpsons, family guy and movie but the number one attraction is TUBING!!

We left our tubing experince for Christmas Day, having now met up with our mates met in India, Dan and Jen, our tubing gruop is now up to 15, this is going to be messy. In brief tubing consists of floating down a riverin a tractor inner tubeand being fished into bars along the way. At the bars there's loads of swings, zip wires and slides into the water, people dancing about and lil Lao ladies plying you with free Lao Lao whiskey, yes not a great combination with water but we're all alive to write this!

Before we even got on the river we were guiltied into having a drink as all proceeds went to the local childrens charity and all staff were volunteers, well you can't deprive the children, beer ro breakfast it is then.

1st bar down the river had the biggest swing i've ever seen in my life and no amount of free Lao Lao was going to make me or any of us do it, except our friend Hennie who proceeded to back flip through the air in front of us, superman's got nothing on him! I decided to get in on the action at the 2nd bar with the zip wire. It's quite surreal to be standing on top of a tower in the blistering heat, zip wire handles in your hand watching people with santa hats floating down the river with Christmas music blaring out.....Where are we again!?!?!

Plunging into the water at the end of the line i decided this was the best Christmas ever! Roger soon followed on the zip wire but Steve took a bit more persuasion to leave his beer Lao, if he could 've taken it with him he would've.

200m down the river, 2pm by this time we started at 10am, we came to what i can only describe as an adults regression to childhood.... A huge MUD POOL!!!!! There's nothing more satisfying then lobbing handfulls of mud at mates and strangers alike and naturally getting the same in return.

5pm came around and we must've only made it 500m (the whole tubing experince is 3km) oopppss, it's gettgin cold and the tubes need to be back by 6pm, this happens to everyone and the Laos now have tuk tuks waitingto take you back but not without charging a fair bit more and making sure you get bak after 6pm (you lose your deposit) can't say i was that bothered because it was only a few quid and we've all just had the best day of our travels yet!

Boxing day was relatively hangover free, we spent the whole day in on e restaurant completing a big jig saw (Roger's found his forte), playing cards and trying to remeber the shenanigans of the day before.

As everywhere else we were told was pretty quietwe decided to stayfor New Year, having done tubing, caving and the blue lagoon it was divided on whta to do in between now and then so Jen and I wnt to Phonsavan and the boys went rock climbing and hired out motorbikes.

New Year eve wasn't a mad affair but really enjoyed by all and Roger got to practice his Lao chat up lines.