Laos baby! Five years ago we lasted all of four hours, made it 100 meters down the road but sucsefully enjoyed beerloa! This time started out ruffly the same although we had a few mishaps with money..... Noone could get it out and our wonderful gibbon experince where we zipped wired through the canyopys turned into one zip wire to a tree house! We eventuly sorted out the money problems when we worked out one million kip was the grand total of £75! All that was left to do was enjoy a cold beerloa over the river. Sadly we didn't stop at just one and the night ended with us dancing on the belcony to jenny from the block and having a pillow fight before we all passed out.

Being the orgaised travlers we are we did orgaise five tickets with reserved seating on the two day slow boat. We had an early start of 7 am, as spud and myself are hangover queens we got up, brought brekkie and snacks for everyone! In the lonley planet it warns you about the slow boat, the alternative is a speed boat where they suggest you buy a helmet!! We asked our guesthouse owner if we needed a pillow for the journey to make it confortable and his answer was 'some people do, some people don't' AMAZING! after that our answer to everthing is some people do and some people don't.

We didn't buy any pillows in the end because it would have costed us five beers each which none of us wanted to give up. Turns out the right choice as all the seats where ex mini van! We rocked up to the boat, excited about our reserved seats to find that no one else was there. So yea we did get the best seats but we were all intoduced to laos time!!!! Four and a half hours later, ten head counts to make sure the boat was at maxium capacity and then some ( well there's always plastic chairs) and we were off.

I guess you can say we were all a little worse for wear after our singing and early starts so the first half of the journey was spent sleeping. As afternoon approched we all started stiring and enjoying our suroundings a little more. We were sailing down the Mekong river Which is the largest river in S.E.A. We had mountins blooming with life all around us. Evey now and then we saw a small village with a few huts, cows and people just dotted around. We later pulled up to this village in the middle of nowhere to drop some people off. The budding enturnpeurs of the village came screaming down the cliff trying to get us to buy their goods. Being a sucker for children I decided I wanted to pay double for my coke and have fun bartering with the children. One guy asked the boss child how much a beer was, the kid just turned round and said all of that is okay, took his money and disapeared into the crowd!

The rest of the boat journey was spent playing drafts on mine and shereens new travel drafts board, Reading, getting lost with your thoughts and shooting evils at the loud party group of people at the back of the boat! These guys where crazy, at one point they almost tipped the boat, then one jumped off and when we finally landed at our over night stop one girl had to be carried off! We later heard that it wasn't just the doings of beerlao there was some moon Shang (locals drink,it tastes like rocket fuel) and a few illegal substances!

We arrived at our final desternation to be greeted by a massive aray of hustlers trying to get us to stay in their guesthouse. We found a nice slightly clam lady to stay with, as soon as we agreeded we were rushed up the massive rockey, slipy scary hill to ensure we weren't aproched by another hustler. I had to nip back on the boat for a quick wee and the planks weren't put back properly and I went straight down the middle! I managed to catch my legs between two planks and with my backpack on I found it hard to wrigle out. Man did I have some brusies from that slip :(

Our guesthouse was really nice but we spent only seconds there are we were all starving. We didn't walk far when we found a cute resturant where we were litrally sitting in the familys front room, we even had the kid asleep on the couch and mum watching the Asian version of twilight! We went for a walk then crashed and burnt.

The next morning we were super repared and had pre ordered out brekkie and lunch all we needed now was something to wash it down with. We boarded our boat with our food and three massive cans of beerlao and we were off for round two.

Like the previous day the morning was spent Reading and sleeping but as soon as twelve hit our first cans were popped. We made a few more friends that day and possibly some enemies. The main highlight of the boat trip was a kiwi man jumping into the water butt naked and us almost driving off!

We finally arrived in luang pruang and got a little conned by the tuk tuk driver who took us to the wrong hostel. As rooms were few and far between due to the festival we split up into pairs and left one person with the bags. Shereen and Rachey came into their own and managed to blag that our booking was for tonight at the cheapest hostel in town, luckily it worked even if Becki and I did have to sleep in the staff room! That night we got settled in and ate our first bit of western food and headed back to the hostel to chill.

Today we were off to the waterfall but before we could leave we had to get supplies! They would consist of a massive bin filled to the top with water, lots of cut in half bottles and buckets and a few water guns thrown in for fun! We were all set our only rules no monks, yea I could live with that. Only meters Down the road we were met with our first ambush by some young kids hiding round the corner. They didn't hold back and before we knew it we were drowned. We did manage to get a few bucket shots in but by the time we had realsied we were gone onto the next ones. We hit eveyone, old, young, black, White, westen, not, backpack or camera we held no mercy. Our specilty was inside tuk tuks where people thought they were safe as they had the flaps down, but unlucky for them the back was open, BOOM!

We took a few good hits and after about half an hour we had to reload at a locals house and to say thank you we socked them, their kids and our driver!

We arrived at the waterfall and the joke soon turned on us. A group of American cylist we had drowned had dropped their bikes off and opened fire when we had no way of protecting ourselves. It's all fun and games though :)

We paid our entrence fees and walked up the path of the waterfall. To our surprise there was a massive enclouser of brown bears. Each bear had a horrfic story of why it was there. Some were from circuses, some from zoos and pet stores an others from street people tryin to make a buck selling their pictures. The enclousers were really nice and we felt sorry for the little bears so put a few dollors in the donations box and signed the protest.

We continued walking towards the waterfall, stopped for a few pictures and to grab a beer then we found the top!!!! There was a rope swing tied up to a near by tree and becki, shereen and holly wasted no time climbing up. Each of them did an Intresting landing but all enjoyed their tarzan jane experince.

Just before we were due to leave I managed to convice eveyone it would be a great idea to jump of the top of the falls. With a quick sip of beer we were off. We scrambled up the edge, jumped over the puddles and balanced along the algey ridden edge and tip toed on the mouth of the falls.

We had decided to all jump holding hands but lifeguard and outdoor ed teacher Spud said NO!!! Shereen went first, jumpng effortlessly and landed nice and straight (for the first time in her life.) then it was becki and my turn. We both took big jumps outwards to avoid the rocks and landed gracefully into the water below, if landing slightly too close to each other. It was the young racheys turn to take the plung she steped up and oops there she goes, bump goes her bottom on the rock and she plops into the water. It felt like then longest ten seconds of my life waiting for her little face to pop up but it did! Luckily she had comited to jumping so her head was forward meaning she didn't hit It and she was just left with a few scratches and a bit of shock. Spud jumped in behind rachel with no problems and we all swam out. Giggling about what happened but all realising it could have been worse. Becki and rachel decided to wait there while shereen spud and I went for a walk. We took some more pictures and headed back to the van. The journey back was similar to the one there, a lot of water was thrown and we had to make a quick stop of at a river to top up.

When we arrived home we got cleaned up, headed out for some food and played table tennis calling it an early night as we were of to vang vieng for some tubin fun next!!!