Vang Vieng, Laos, November 2010

What I did…

Vang Vieng was crazy… met so many cool people who we spent all of our time with, way too many to mention but they know who they are. Bucket Bar on the night which was crazy, massive pink buckets filled with whisky and coke. Then for the tubing! OMG tubing is sooooo much fun, it’s basically a river with 6 or 7 bars down both sides and you jump in a rubber ring a sail from bar to bar getting drunk along the way. Unless your bandaged up like me! I walked the 1st day and managed to get drunk enough to fall asleep at the side of the river in my failed attempt to reach the next bar. The idea was to rest my legs for a moment in the grass, next thing I know I’m being woken up by people walking past! Of course I lost everyone in our group and had been long forgotten in their drunken states!

Don’t ask me how I got back to town as I really don’t know, but I did make it and sat on a wall outside our guest house in the hope Ed or Jase would come back with the key. While waiting sat on the wall I managed to fall off the other side and scratch my head and bruise my side pretty badly too as a Laos family watched me from across the road. They did nothing in the way of support and just left me to pick my self up and dust myself down. Fell to sleep watching Utd v Villa and woke up on 90 mins to find we were drawing, tottally irrelevant about Utd but still, gutted.

I got myself up and headed down to bucket bar with Jase (he came back to get me out of bed) and soldiered on by swapping silly stories with perfect strangers while drinking out of another bucket. Me and Ed had short straw so had to share the double bed, in which he managed to piss himself during the night (he say’s it was water but my version of the events are much funnier). So I wake up with his side of the sheets rolled over to the middle, I put my hand down and feet the wet sheet. WHAT THE HELL MAN?! Have you pissed yourself? hahahahahahaha To cut it short it did not smell so was likely it was water but either way, he wet the bed!

So we hit the river for the second day running and it pan’s out much the same way as the 1st but I did not want to miss out on the fun any more. So decided instead of trying to walk the long way round to the final bar and fall asleep in the grass again id steal someones tube and sail to the bar, the easy way! When I got out the river I realised I had my man bag on… with my camera inside! I opened the bag, tipped it upside down and half the river followed my camera to the floor! The camera is not waterproof… it is now, but it just doesn’t really perform to the best of it’s capabilities… i.e it wont turn on and take photos! I saved my memory card so I can count myself lucky-ish! Bucket bar again? Yes please!

I wanted to go tubing again for 3rd day on the trot but was talked into going to ‘Blue Lagoon’… great choice! Clear blue lagoon with fish swimming round us as we swung in off rope swings and jumped off tree branches into the water. Great day without having to punish our bodies all day… even though we went Bucket Bar again on the night for more drunken fire limbo and Nikki singing Space Bound to me 3 times in a row!

Tubing was so much fun but it was time to chill out for a little bit so we headed to Luang Prabang which is just as nice as Vang Vieng but without all the alcohol… ermmm that’s my story and I’m sticking to it!