Sorry for the delay in the posts. Promise we have been making daily summaries we have just had little internet access and time to type the posts out!!
So the only way to get from Luang Prabang to Vang Vieng is driving, either by mini bus or a normal bus.
We decided to go with the mini bus thinking that it would be more comfortable and the fact that its quicker...After our journey I'm not so sure it was the best decision.
The road from LP to VV is only about 120km but it took us 6 hours to get there!! The road is through the mountains and very very winding. It makes Bainskloof pass look like a walk in the park. I had read that it was pretty tough going, and for the first 2 hours or so I couldn't understand what people were on about...and then we go into the next half. Seriously bad. And to make it worse the driver would only put the aircon on when going downhill, I think the car was loaded too full to make it up with the aircon on too. It is beautiful though and the scenery does go some ways in making up for the drive.
I was feeling pretty rough at the end of it, and very glad once we got to Vang Vieng. Although we heard from another guy in our bus that the journey from Hanoi to LP is the journey from hell. It takes 26hours and is just as winding, I am very glad we decided to fly. Although according to him the bus journey from hell makes for a good facebook post, so maybe we missed out. Sorry guys that our comfort came before your reading pleasure :)
Once we got to VV we walked around trying to find somewhere to stay. We hadn't really done that much research other than Jeremy doing some reading on the way there (his car sickness is a lot better than mine!) so we headed down to the river to see what we could find.
We ended up at TCK Guesthouse, which boasted river views and only cost us around 10 pounds. It was quite a nice spot and brand new. The rooms were quite funny though as they had been finished off really badly. For example the paint jobs on the walls stopped about 10cm from the skirting boards and the ceilings had circles drawn on them for the downlighters, but whoever installed those used the guides very roughly as you can see the circles quite clearly with the light installed right next to it. LOL. But the place was big and clean and the view was pretty amazing.
For those of you that don't know what Vang Vieng is, its basically a sleepy town on the road between LP and the capital of Laos, Vientiane. This town has now been transformed into the party town of SE Asia and has quite a reputation. You basically hire tubes,go down the river and stop at numerous bars on the way down to drink. Water, tubes and drunk people makes for a pretty awesome party experience!! After you get sick of the tubing all the bars in the town serve western food and most of them have daybeds and endless re runs of friends or family guy playing.
After we checked in we went into town for some food and killed a couple of hours watching friends. Doesn't matter how many times you have seen friends it is still great, and even more so after a few weeks of BBC News and if you are lucky a decent movie on HBO (that you will inevitably only catch the last 30mins of).
We ended up at bucket bar after that. And the name really says it all. Jeremy and I ordered a lao lao bucket and I will say that it went down really slowly.No amount of ice could make it taste better. We decided that we would stick to vodka buckets from now on. Anyways we spent some time laughing at the drunken tubers, knowing that it would probably be us tomorrow...And had a relatively quiet night knowing that we would need it the next day.
Will leave you now with some pics, Jeremy will take over for the actual tubing day.
View on journey from LP to VV
Vang Vieng
Watching Friends :)
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