Trying to fit the world inside a picture frame...

There are some places you come across that you know photos will never do justice - but you try anyway! We met some girls in Vientiane who told us about riverside bungalows in Vang Vieng, when we got off the bus the sign said 600m, at this point me and Amy nearly gave up on the idea...we started walking...200m, 100m, 50m, 50m...hello!? What is this...50m to the next sign? or is 50m just a complete lie altogether? Eventually, past the temple, along the dirt track, down a steep slope and a meadow comes into view, then some little white huts, then the mountains, then the river....it's like we just stumbled into paradise (after 600m anyway!)

We checked into the bamboo huts and take in the scene, we cant quite believe the place exists or that we get to stay there! Amy heads off to check out the facilities and I hear some rustling in the hut, luckily its only a really big lizard running across the floor...by the time I call Amy back the lizard has disappeared and she's not quite sure how big a lizard i mean. Off she goes again and lo and behold it comes back again, doing rounds of the room...I'm not quite sure whether paradise is worth it if we have to share our hut with that creature. Amy comes back again and it disappears again! Luckily she catches sight of its head and realises I'm not talking about a ghecko. Thats the last we see of him though, thankfully.

We head out to discover the town, turns out we discovered most of it when we walked to the guesthouse. It has one main street, pretty much a dirt track lined with cafes and restaurants showing Friends on repeat all day, all evening, everyday. Some places break from the norm and show The Simpsons or put films on, but most of them show Friends.

It's Saturday - the bank is closed. We were hoping to go tubing (see later) on the Sunday and be leaving by the Monday, but since we didn't bring enough pennies from Vientiane we either have to survive on $5 for two days, thus having enough money to buy tubing tickets, pay the accomodation and the bus ticket OR spend some of the money we might need and assume we can get money out of the bank on Monday, pay for everything and get on the bus in about an hour, if there is a problem at the bank then we'd have no chance. Since mine and Amy's budget skills consist of - having a certain amount to spend and when we spend more than that we subtract things like accomodation/transport costs of the day from the amount until we are under budget...so we decided to stay an extra day in Vang Vieng and be sure that the bank would give us some money. In the meantime we have accomodation and bus fare to go and spend :)

Tubing and kayaking are about the only things to do in Vang Vieng, unless you are interested in experimenting with magic mushrooms on pizza, in shakes, in sandwiches, in salad....all of the above are readily available on the menus and when I ordered a pizza with no mushrooms the waitress said "no magic mushrooms", "damn straight love - this is my dinner we are talking about!". So we ended up going tubing two days because it is the most fun you can have with a rubber ring and a river. You get your ring and they drop you off at the river and in you get....you float about 50m downstream and you arrive at the first bar...beer and zip lines are the order of the day here. Another 50m and another bar, this time with a rope swing that no-one seems to be able to hold onto, least of all the weedy girls. Belly flops galore! About two hours in and you can still see the starting point in the river! The next bar has food and the biggest rope swing of the lot, we saw some girls basically fall from the platform because they couldn't hold their own weight and winded themselves pretty badly - this quickly deterred us from having a go.

A couple of drinks in and everyone's already planning to be back again tomorrow! The rest of the river was a string of more bars and jumps and then you reach the end of the line. But there isn't really anything to say it's the end of the road - if we weren't following some people who knew where to get off, it could have been a disaster! The only downside is that at the other end you have to walk your ring back to the shop through the middle of town...and since these activities rarely allow for you to bring a change of clothes, it was a bit like one of those nightmares when you are standing in the middle of the street wearing fewer clothes than you'd maybe like?! :)

We also had our final farewell with Jim and Charlie who we first met in Siam Reap, they were heading home in a few days time back to sunny(?) ol' England.