We get up to leave Luang Prabang in the morning and head to Vang Vieng, and to our surprise the little witch of a guest house owner has done a 180 and is the cheeriest woman alive! She offered us water and told us to wait for a tuk tuk! The tuk tuk comes and to graces horror half way through the journey to the bus stop she gets told to move from one side to the other because it was leaning one way too much! Great! I see Laos are as bad at Thailand when it comes to subtlety! The bus was an 11 seater minivan, the views up the mountains were spectacular (see attached) however, after a good few hours of rising hills and winding roads, most people started to feel car sick! It took 6 hours to get there, but as we arrive its not too dissimilar to a desert town. It's literally a town stuck in the road, middle of nowhere! We arrive by tuk tuk to our hostel 'Malany Villa' it was basic but clean, so we thought, but after lying on the bed for an hour or so bugs soon started to appear! We saw one huge one with a red streak and went to find wifi to investigate! Google confirmed our fears, BEDBUGS! So we went downstairs and asked to move rooms! He obliged and said he had special spray to kill bed bugs and would we like some for the new room, we obviously said yes! Laos style, he arrived back with fly spray! please no one enter room 4009 here! I really doubt fly spray kills bedbugs!
We headed out to find some food, we went to a sports bar (one not playing friends on repeat!) and bought some food. We watched England v Fiji and had a few beerlao.
After a reasonably paranoid sleep, we decided to head out for breakfast and find a book shop to swap our books we also booked a full day kayaking, tubing and cave tour for the following day.
We spent the whole afternoon at a river front hotel with a swimming pool, this is the first time we've been in a pool since Bangkok on arrival, it's so nice! We have decided that this is where we think Sophie gets ill as it was really hot and we hadn't drunk anywhere near enough water! at around 7ish Sophie starts to feel really Sick and has a stomach ache, but she's still a bit hungry so we head to a restaurant where we can chill and watch friends. Soon after ordering Sophie feels worse and heads back worrying she may actually be sick, so I eat alone and ask to have hers put in a takeaway pot, I head back and luckily have received several Facebook messages from Hannah, a girl we met in ayuttuyah, saying she's in town so to go and find her. When I find her she's with a big group of people, mainly English and Scottish but who have all been working in oz for a year and are on their way back home, we went to several bars and had a really fun night. The next day I awake to see Sophie is still not great! I go and ask the tour guide if he could do any refund, but he couldn't, So I go alone. i arrive to meet the rest of my group (leaving Sophie in bed) and see I'm the only English with 6 Chinese! None of them talk to me and they don't speak that greater English either, although I was reassured by the tour guide, a 27 year old Laos man at leadt half by size, that he was the only friend I needed, followed by how he was trying to find a wife, followed by several probing questions about my own relationship status, great! The tour itself was brilliant, we went into a water cave on tubes (rubber rings) following a rope around 500m through to the centre, here we saw stalactites and stalagmites, after this we had a BBQ lunch and then headed to the elephant cave. We each had a lucky wish given to us and admired the rather large Buddhas! We then headed to the river to do some kayaking, I was paired with the guide, I thought great, training for Rio 2016 will commence again, but no, every time I turned around he was just staring in to space! It was soon after checking him several times that I decided to stop paddling and let him do something! We pass lots of people doing 'tubing' but it's got no atmosphere and there's no bars open or music at all! It kinds of feels like people are only drinking because that's the stories they've heard but its really different since tubing technically got banned!
I arrived back to find Sophie still in her pjs in bed at 4ish, we chilled out for a bit and she decided she should probably try and eat something. we headed out for cash and food but sophie felt ill again and so headed back with a bag of plain crisps. I managed to bump into the group from last night who were staying in the hostel and they invited me for food with them and then to play pool (I obviously didn't play, I'd have embarrassed myself far too much!). Friday arrived and yay Sophie feels better!! We get a tuk tuk to the bus station and await a 3 hour journey to Vientiane, we are hoping its better than expected, as an Irish guy told me 'its the worst capital city ever, there's no cinema or a McDonald's'