Chill Out town!

 From Vientiene we took the "VIP" bus to Vang Vieng. If there is such a thing as a VIP bus I don't know, we never saw it. We were packed into a van with about 12 people, for about 4 hours. A good chunk of time was spent talking to a very chatty Aussie also from Perth, kind of a strange guy, asking for a drink of water and to use our sun screen 2 minutes after meeting us! Anyway so the ride was really long, I didn't feel good and wouldn't feel good for 3 days. Must have been something I ate, even though I was careful, didn't eat off the streets, except for a couple of crepes.

On the bus to Vang Vieng

We loved this little town though. Our guesthouse cost us 3 bucks each a night,can't beat that! The main road is lined with resturants and the seating is on raised platforms and you take off your shoes and sit on cusions and pillows around a little table and kick back and eat, drink, and watch episodes of Friends!  For some reason this town loves Friends and every place has TV with the shows going on.  A popular place for the hippy type backpackers, and i heard you can get 'happy shakes' and happy this and that, like a shake with marajuana in it,or some other drug.  I dunno, I didn't see it on any menu I looked at, but maybe you gotta ask for the special menu!  But we wouldn't do that anyway. Just drink, and the Beer Lao is pretty good if i do say so, even bought a t-shirt. Hard to say no for a whole 2 bucks.

rest stop on the way

The internet cafes here offer a service to put movies and music on your ipod for you, I was so excited ! That's what I've been trying to do the entire time i've been traveling, i purchase 30 episodes of shows from Itunes but havn't been able to download them all at an internet cafe along the way because it would take days and cost a fortune.  So at this place I paid $20 and got all Grey's Anatomy season 2,and 3 movies! Sweeeeet!

For our full day here, we went tubing down the Nam Song river! It's something everyone does and it was so much fun!!  It takes a few hours to float down, and for the most part its an easy ride but theres a few patches where you have to paddle like mad to avoid the rocks or smashing into the bank!  Towards the end there are a few bars set up, some of them have platforms with a rope you can jump and swing out from. I didn't try it, i don't like heights!  It was a great day though, lots of fun!

Vang Vieng restuarant

Main road in Vang Vieng

Kid in a basket