Luang Prabang and Vang Vieng

It's been a while since my last blog and for good reason! The last couple of weeks have been some of the messiest of the year!

I got the slow boat from the Thai Border to Luang Prabang, an old colonial town in the center of northern Laos. It was a quality trip, despite being pretty uncomfortable. The scenery on the way is amazing... but copious amounts of lager later we stopped looking. There ended up being a massive group of us at the back behind the engine room, and from somewhere we managed to get some bongo's and a harmonica on the go too, so we soon drowned the engine out with some quality renditions of 'We all dream of a team of Gary Breens' and 'Five German bombers' alongside your standard Wonderwall's and a touch of Boyzone and Five.
After having a fight with some soot we found on the bottom of a wok we got to the overnight stop, where a Laos bloke went a bit nuts at us thinking we were blacking ourselves up! We got to a hotel, dropped off our bags, wiped the soot off and headed to the bar and got progressively more steaming.

Day 2 was a lot more civilized, and we sat on the boat reading and playing chirades, I-spy, and the incredibly specific game- probably the best game for passing the time ever invented.
We got to Luang Prabang, and the high brow tone continued while we were there, as we read, watched films and did some sightseeing, only dinking on the second night, in a bar with a beach volleyball court!

The 6-hour journey from Luang Prabang to Vang Vieng was pretty stunning too as most of the roads in Laos are higher up in the hills and mountains, so for most of the journey youre lookign over vast expanses of land dotted by tiny villages with barely the most basic amenities -we were driving through villages where the communal hose/shower was outside so the people were showering by the road.

And then we arrived... tubing!
The messiest place I've ever been.
Vang Vieng was supposed to be a beautiful spot on Nam Song river... before a load of backpackers showed up and turned it into a hole where drink is cheap/free and you can rent out a tube to float down the river in during the day and get steaming before going out at night and getting even more steaming!
I did a day of this and started working for Bucket Bar with a couple of boys I met in PhiPhi -Chan and Dave. The deal was this: I get free food and free drink all day, in return I hand out free shots and get people playing drinking games... did I say job? Is that really the right word for it?

Anyway after a week of that I had managed to run myself down and get a fever that left me hugging my pillow in feotal position shivering even thoguh it was about 30 degrees, after a couple of days of that it was time to move on but I would be back in an instant. I met so many sound people in that place.

I'm sure I should have more to say about Vang Vieng but for some reason I can't remember too much of it.