Hi all. I think I am going to have to start to summarise these blogs a little more as I am struggling to keep up to date. Done so much since my last blog, could write another 4 blogs.

Well after leaving Luang Prabang we went to Vang Vieng, where it's all about the tubing. For those who do not know what this is it is basically floating down a river on a tyre, stoping off at the many bars on the way down to grab drink and usually a free shot of whiskey. There is also swings, slides and jump points from which you can go into the river, making sure you swim quickly to the side after so the currant doesn't take you. You also have to watch you head when floating down the river as the Lao people use filled bottles of water tied to the end of rope to throw to/at you to pull you into there bar. It was great fun, even though I managed to lose 2 pairs of sun glasses, 1 vest, 1 hat and 1 tube over the 2 days that we did it. We had a recovery day inbetween these days. The second day tubing was the day before my birthday so we kind of celebrated it that day. Needless to say the following day I was not feeling the best, so a casual walk through one of the close by caves was about all I could manage.

The surrounding area of Vang Vieng (VV) is beautiful,surrounded by mountains that contain many caves. There are far more travellers in VV that locals or thats how it seems. Almost every bar in town plays a continuous loop of either Friends or Family Guy, which is how we spent one day recovering from tubing. It is a small town, so easy to get around by foot.

For our final 2 nights in Laos we were in Vientiane, the capital of Laos. Our first impression was not very good, but it improved in the second day. For a capital it seemed fairly quiet. However, the first task on arrival was to find a guesthouse. We were going to take our time and find a good one at a decent price, as I only had about 250,000 kip (20 pound to last me). However, it began to rain so this made our mind up fairly quickly, we picked the closest one to us. The next priority was to find a bar that was showing the United vs Liverpool match, thankfully it was close by. Not sure how upset Zo would have been if she had missed that match.

The follwoing day we set of site seeing around Vientiane, first we went to the day market, then to their replica of the Arc De Triomphe. I do not believe it as impressive as the real thing but it had some great views from the top of the whole city. Next we visited the oldest temple in Vientiane, which also happened to be right next to the Presidential Palace. This was an impressive modern building, unfortunately it had some scaffolding outside the front of it so that spoilt it a little. Finally the follwoing morning we had breakfast at what has turned out to be our favourite place to have breakfast, The Scandinavian Bakery. Now off to catch a plane to Hanoi, lets see what that brings.