Another early start and we were at the travel agent's office at 8.30am for a 9.00am departure, only to be told the bus doesn't actually leave until 10.00am. It was a full bus, luckily with air-conditioning and we set off on time for the 4-hour journey to Vang Vieng.

The scenery was pretty unremarkable with quite bad roads - one minute a tar road and the next a section of gravel. There was so much dust that houses, cars and the roadside vegetation was brown/red in colour. There was also lots of evidence of new infrastructure - a 414km railway line to the Chinese border - a joint venture with China and Laos. So not the most scenic of journeys until we got to the outskirts of Vang Vieng and saw the limestone mountains coming in to view.

We arrived on a disused airstrip on the outskirts of town and took a Jumbo (Laos version of a tuk tuk but seats many more people) to our small hotel. It was late afternoon and we found our way down to the Nam Song river and had a relaxing couple of hours watching the sunset with a couple of beers - there seems to be a theme here! There is of course an Irish Bar in town so we went and had bangers and mash, Dan a pint of Guinness, a real treat.

Day 2 - Sunrise is late and the mountains from our balcony looked beautiful in the golden light and seeing the hot air balloons floating over. Our accommodation doesn't include breakfast so we headed back to the Irish bar for a full Irish breakfast.

We then got picked up late morning and were driven upstream where we picked up our kayaks and had a lovely couple of hours paddling down river back in to town. We finished the day with another relaxing beer watching the sunset and dinner at the very popular Happy Mango Thai restaurant.

Day 3 - We decided to hire mountain bikes and off we set in the heat of the day. The roads are really not good in Laos and as well as negotiating bamboo bridges over the river, we had to be careful to avoid the many potholes. We cycled through the countryside admiring the landscape with the limestone mountains surrounding us.

We saw a handwritten sign for a cave and cycled "off piste" across a dirt track only to find a very small cave, slightly disappointing. It was the journey back to the main road which was far more interesting.

As we cycled along the single-track dirt track, Heather suddenly stopped and declared we had a problem …… directly facing us about 20 yards away travelling in the opposite direction and closing, was a bull and he wasn't happy. He was "pawing" the ground aggressively and snorting loudly. Heather calmly assessed the situation, dropped her bike and leapt over a bank topped with a barbed wire fence, like a spawning salmon into the adjoining field - leaving her bicycle and husband facing the raging bull - it had now become a lot more obvious that it was a bull and more than a little frustrated. A cow in the opposite field distracted "el Toro" and he charged the bordering bank in a futile attempt to gain access. Fortunately, this distraction allowed the deserted husband time to gather the two bikes and move past the bull to join Heather about 50 metres further on, as she exited the "safe" field.

Our next stop was the Blue Lagoon number 1 (there are 5 apparently). The water was a lovely turquoise colour and set up with ropes hanging down from the trees to swing off and jump in the water and tree branches being used as diving boards. We watched people enjoying themselves for a while and then we decided to make the climb up to the Tham Phu Kham cave. No proper steps as such but a vertical stairway cut out of the rock, so quite heavy going. However, it was worth the effort and was a fantastic cave with a labyrinth of chambers, galleries and crevices. The first chamber, with a hole in the ceiling allowing the rays of the sun to come in, has a large bronze reclining Buddha, lit up by the sunlight. We didn't wander too much deeper in to the cave as we knew it was dark and slippery in places.

We were hot, thirsty and tired so decided we would cycle back in to town and have a quick look at the scenery the other side of the river but opted out of climbing the small mountain for the sunset view and instead we performed our nightly ritual of a sunset beer in a bar overlooking the river, before going out for a bite to eat.

Our 3 nights were quickly over and we enjoyed our time here. We weren't sure what to expect as Vang Vieng was previously renowned as a party destination where there had been a number of tragic deaths from over indulgence. The Government closed the river rave bars in 2012 and it has now become more of an adrenaline-fuelled adventure destination with the majority of bars closing at midnight.