Friday the 13th Jan (aaarrrrgghh) We are up early for the bus to Vang Vieng which leaves at 0930hrs. Our hotel charges us an extra dorrar for breaking the ashtray. Scummers. (no mums, we weren't using it!) Stu enjoys the American breakfast which, so far as he can work out, is basically the English breakfast without the beans or black pudding. So next on this trip I am looking forward to tasting traditional American apple crumble and traditional American Linconshire sausages (followed by traditional American Gelato). Amy really pushes the boat out and goes for the bread and jam option. The coffee here is equally as good as in Vietnam, possibly even better. It's just thick enough so you worry about how black your teeth are going to be after you have finished the cup. As we meet the bus we are greeted by a totally unfamiliar sight; the bus looks new (nearly) and is pretty clean inside. Amazing. After a pretty windy journey we arrive at 13.30. Vang Vieng is hot and dusty in a kind of wild west town image. There is a wedding celebration going on in the local market and they are blasting out the whole town with traditional Lao music. We decide to go tubing down the river and Amy is pretty apprehensive about the whole experience as we have read in the guidebook that there has been supposed deaths on the river (Another case of if it's in the LP then it must be true!) We get our swims on and meet an Aussie who lives in London (they are everywhere round here) called Andy. After signing the obligatory 'you will not sue us if you die form' we get a tuk-tuk up to the drop off point. From the outset it is clear that the death river is anything but. For a start the water is about 6 inches deep and so shallow that Stu gets marooned in the middle right at the start (fat ass!) True there are some deep spots but nothing to get too worked up about. The local lao people have got things pretty sussed out down the river from what we could tell. About every 50m or so there was a bar where you could stop the tubing 'experience' and sit and have a beer. A little further elevated wooden platforms had been constructed with swings and flying foxes which added to the thrill of the ride. In truth it was all pretty tame and Stu attempted one 'flight' which was good fun. As we are right in the middle of the dry season the water was running pretty slow so it would have taken us an age to get back to Vang Vieng. So we scramble up a steep bank and tuk-tuk it back into town before it gets dark. From what we could tell Vang Vieng is a bit of a boom town at the moment with construction going on at a pace as fast as any town of 16000 could manage. Hence we needed to be on our guard for huge holes in the ground as we walked around the town in the evening. A couple of Beer Lao (easily the best and cheapest beer in SE Asia) later and we were ready for the ubiquitous Friday night curry - Chicken Tikka Masala for Stu and Biryani for Aims and very nice it was too. The evening's entertainment consisted of a killer pool competition and we both did reasonably well (ok Amy didn't actually manage to pot a ball but she wasn't the worst player there). Suddenly it was past midnight and we had an early start to get to Luang Prabang in the morning so we called it a night. Lots of Love Stu & Amy.