Laos - Vientiane & Vang Vieng -

We left Cambodia on 15th Jan and flew into the Laos capital city, Vientiane. To be honest, its more of a large town than a small city. There's not a lot here apart from a replica Arc de Triomphe (made from concrete that the Americans gave the Lao's to build an airport runway) , and a golden stupah. Weirdly, there's also a top notch hair salon that Vanessa is in treating herself to permanently straightened hair as I write! Apparently (so she tells me) its a real bargain at $40 and would have set her back at least 300 pounds in London.

We stayed in a great cheap guest house called Phone Paseuth with the luxury of cable TV and a hot shower - ok a luxury we've been used to for a while now - which was close to the central water fountain. Here, there were some excellent restaurants offering 3 course French set menus for around $6. Apart from this and a good Scandinavian bakery Vientiane didn't have a great deal more to offer so we booked ourself a trip to Vang Vieng - on the recommendation of loads of other travellers...

We then took a 4 hour bus ride and spent a few days in and around Vang Vieng. It’s like a mini Kho San Road - lots of backpackers, bars showing western movies and re-runs of ‘Friends’. As well as tubing, Vang Vieng is famous for its ‘happy shakes’ and ‘happy pizzas’ or there’s the ‘Ecstatic shake’ if you feeling like getting, well, ecstatic I suppose. Our happy shake though was distinctly average and left us feeling, well, pretty much like we did before drinking it.

We stayed in a little bungalow next to the river and mountains. There was also a nice little balcony that we chilled out on as the sun went down. We came here with Tanya and George, a Canadian couple that we've been hanging out with for the last couple of days who've been a really good laugh. Amazingly have been with each other for 16 years and are travelling for 8 months around SE Asia.



We all went on a kayaking, trekking and tubing trip through caves, villages and down the river. We also got to do some rope swinging and cliff jumping over and into the river off these giant man-made swings. All along the river in Vang Vieng you can hear the intermittent cries of "BeerLao! BeerLao" as locals reach with long bamboo poles to pull you into their 'riverside bar' and to buy a Beer Lao. Yes, officially the best beer in Asia! It would have to be in our top 5 days away so far. The landscape was incredible, and this town instantly puts you in a chilled out kinda mood.

We did a another day on the river, this time tubing down the whole way which was cool; basically you sit in a giant inner tube and float down the river in the sun for four or five hours. The scenery is spectacular, limestone cliffs rising out of rice paddy fields. Again we went on the rope swings and zip lines...chilled out with a few beers and leisurely made our way down the 3.5km stretch of river. Travelling can't get much better than this.

Laos was a real breathe of fresh air from the rest of Asia - the people were some of the friendliest we've ever seen, and unlike Thailand and Cambodia, weren't doing a real hard sell on you. Although its a pretty poor country, the Laotians don't seem to beg a lot either. Next it was to the old capital of Laos and a 6 hour minibus ride to Luang Prabang.