Vang Vieng

Another lovely place- a dusty town on the river, surrounded by mountains and cliffs. So picturesque.To get to our guesthouse you had to cross one of several little bamboo footbridges. Our little hut was lovely, set in a beautiful garden, with loads of flowers and butterflies, beside a little stream with views of the mountains. We liked it very much!!

The town itself has got pretty touristy (by laos standards!) and was quite funny in that all the bars seemed to be showing various episodes of 'friends' at any moment throughout the day.One advantage of that tjo, was that we managed to get a lovely roast dinner!! yeayayay! Down by the river tho, there were a cluster of cute little bamboo bars with separate 'rooms' on stilts onto the river. You could sit there watching the kids palying around, and the sun go down over the mountains, then the swallows coming out and swooping over the water-just sooo nice!

Did some lovely cycling around the area too- one day we did 26 k ( !!!!) and visited some of the caves. One of these was filled with water and you floated in on a rubber tube along a line with torches-quite scary but fun!

The main attraction in Vang Vieng is the tubing- driftng down the river on these big rubber tubes, stopping off along the way at bamboo bars which are scattered the whole way along, playing music and zip wires into the water- too much fun. The day we did it we did it we were enjoying it so much that we'd only managed to do about 1k out of the 3k route by the time the sun was setting and had to paddle ourselves the whole way back (the river was hardly moving in parts-not exactly white water at this time of year!). It was freezing and pitch black! Bit of a nightmare but at least we didnt have to worry about crocodiles or other scary things in the water! The next day, Marc and I decided to do it again- a day relaxing on the river for $3- we couldn't say no! and this time made it the whole way down just in time for sunset. Lovely! We had a great time there. Proper relaxation!!