Vang Vieng and Vientiane

Our Laos adventure continued from Phonsavan to Vang Vieng on another long, windy bus journey with more spectacular views and more stomach lurching turns. Vang Vieng is situated along the river with impressive Karst hills along the banks. The views across the river are lovely, however that's really not the main reason that people come to Vang Vieng - as is immediately apparent when you walk through the small town and see bar after car showing re-runs of Friends to travellers tucking into burgers and pizza. Do I sound disapproving? Maybe, however I certainly watched an awful lot of episodes in the few days we were there and yes, I enjoyed it! (8 months travellig is my excuse and I'm sticking to it!) The main draw to Vang Vieng however is the tubing - a bit like white water rafting but in a tractor tube inner and involving far more bars along the way. We'd heard good and bad things about this - on the negative side people have died doing it and it takes away form the natural beauty of the surroundings, on the positive side it's a lot of fun and provides income to 1,550 families in the area. Of course we were doing it - there was no stopping Kev!
We set out around 1pm on our chosen tubing day, relieved that the sun was shining. We got taken to the starting point by tuk tuk and to the first bar, where we stayed for a while having a go on the slides and zip wire into the river. Then it was time to start tubing. Basically, the current takes you down the river in your tube until the next bar you choose to stop at. We had a great afternoon in the sun with a few drinks (well, quite a few. But not too many of course!) and great company as well as the added fun of zip wires (scary!) and slides which got higher at each bar we stopped at. Kev has now learnt not to dive into the river when it's not quite deep enough, and I have learnt to listen to plans more carefully. When we left the penultimate bar, I was firmly under the impression that we were beginning the hour or so float back to Vang Vieng and totally ignored the final bar... whilst everyone else stopped off. There is nothing quite like floating down a river in the dark, on your own to induce panic! Clearly on a one way river there was little chance of me getting lost, however the hour seemed like the longest I had ever experienced. I got back (finally) to find that Kev had caught a tuk-tuk from the last bar and been back for ages wondering what had become of me.
So, that was our Vang Vieng experience, and it truly was one of the most fun things we have done this year so far. This is clearly why so many people stay and do it every day for a week, but we are far too old for that as it took us about 4 days to recover. After Vang Vieng we headed to Vientiane, which we had been told by many people was not really worth spending too long in. In some ways they were right - there isn't a huge amount to do, however it is a really lovely small capital and we enjoyed a day sightseeing and enjoying the markets.
We are now back in Thailand having crossed the Friendship Bridge to Nong Khai, where have watched unexplained fireballs shoot into the sky - more about that next time!