Thavisouk Hotel Vang Vieng

Vang Vieng is all about tubing. The tubing experience is almost impossible to explain in words or photos (The computer won't allow me to upload pictures at this time) You basically have a rubber inner tube that you hire in the town and then get a tuk tuk a few km up river and float downstream to the town. The river is lined with platform bars on ...

We travelled several hours by bus to reach this tiny town, with only one main attraction - tubing! <br>The first evening we arrived, we went out for dinner and had a few drinks in a few bars. As its a bit of a party town the drinks come in large buckets!<br><br>The next day ...

... beers, chatted with some people we'd met the previous day, then went on the amazing rope swing - it never gets old! After this we just walked to Bar II, and soon met up with Adam and Ash, the former who was inexplicably but brilliantly sporting yellow face paint and a lampshade on his head. More buckets were purchased, the music was great, and it all descended into carnage that topped that of the previous day. I looked ridiculous in my pink ensemble, and my shorts were no doubt ...

... reached the top and a friendly Lao bloke handed me the bar attached to the rope. The initial reaction when looking down at the river far, far below, is "What he **** am I doing?!" but I ignored this after only a second or two and leapt straight off the platform. Only about a second passed before I hit the apex of the curve and the force really hit me, but then I continued to swing all the way out over the river, then back to the platform again, then back out ...

... and after a typically tedious exchange with a tuk-tuk driver, we were driven to the bridge at the south-west end of town, near which was a hostel recommended by my RG. No sooner had we got out, then several guesthouse touts turned up on mopeds and began to pester us. Ignoring these accommodation vultures, we set off over the bridge, and had soon checked into the guesthouse, me and Susan in one double room, and Mark in another. The guesthouse was set close by ...

... but we also enjoyed participating in some of the myriad of activities offered in and around this party town - kayaking down the Nam Song River, tubing through torch-lit caves, swinging from ropes into a cold water lagoon - along with about twenty young monks in their saffron robes, and climbing the rocky hillside to explore various limestone caves. As Debbie aptly depicted them, &#8220;they were lovely, lazy, long, Laos days&#8221;. <br><br> I&#8217;m finally starting to appreciate ...

Arose earlyish and showered. Hey, believe it or not, there was water! I got up, not too early, as I'll explain later.<br>What's there doing today? Stroll over to one of the bike rental places, conveniently at hand, and hire a push bike, mountain or otherwise, and have a ride around replacing the pics of the scenery I'd fallen in love with.<br>Just my luck. I got to the nearest one just too late. A couple of ...

... took me damn near 5 days to feel better. In the meantime Matt went with the monks to the library and played scrabble through the heat of the day, so he was having a fine and dandy time! But all and all, he was wonderful and at my beck and call, thanks matt!<br><br>So then we got on a bus and headed down to a beautiful yet weird town called Vang Vieng. Oh Vang Vieng, a small village on a peaceful river, surrounded by incredibly karst mountains steeply rising out of ...

... very curvy ride from Luang Prabang was nice in itself, but we were blown away when we arrived in Vang Vieng. A clear river runs along the town with loads of restaurants and bars along its edge. In the distance granite mountains shoot into the sky as far as you can see. <br><br>There is nothing to do but sit and enjoy it all! <br><br>Tubing is a huge activity here and we've spent three whole days enjoying it. There are bars about ...