So Saturday morning after deciding we'd had enough of Luang Prabang Fabio and i took the 'local bus' (after an adventurous ride to the bus statoin on a motorbike with a mini cage attached which you could barely see out of, with a driver who spoke no english..) to Vang Vieng. Lucky for us this local bus had about 8 tourists and no locals on it, so we all got 2 seats to ourselves! After a very windy and nauseous few hours we arrived for a toilet stop (1.5 hours after we asked for one..) and were told that as there was too much space on the bus we were to hop onto the air conditioned VIP bus which was quite crowded! Still thats what you get i spose.
The town here Vang Vieng is quite little, population 25,000, and is so beautiful. the town is in a flat area with a river running right by it, and is surrounded by beautiful limestone cliff mountains and caves. The cafe's here all play Friends, The Simpsons and Family guy non-stop, and there are even places wher eyou can pick a DVD for them to play for you! the Laos people are nice but we found one place run bya British guy who kicked us out for not being 'paying customers' (apparently a fruit smoothie and cup of tea dont count us as being paying customers) because we said we werent yet hungry at 4.3opm!! There is so much to do in this town, there is 'tubing', where you hop into a tube and tube down the river, stopping at swings and bars along the way. of course its insanely safe to drink buckets of alcohol, have their 'happy shakes' (i'll let your imagination do the work on that) and then jump into the river and tube back.. tourists do die here but its not hard to figure out why when you see that..
There is also rock climbing (which i did 2 days of, was really tough but really good!), trekking, kayaking (i am going to kayak onto Vientienne, the capital when im finished here), and you can rent a bike and explore the caves. I did that yesterday with Avi, an american guy, and we looked at two caves, stopped for a cold drink and lunch at a cafe in the middle of nowhere, and then left 2.5 hours later when the monsoon rains subsided! Am definately going to do that agian as there are many more caves to see. It was lots of fun trekking to the two caves we did see through muddy rice fields and rivers.. our clothes were pretty well caked in mud by the time we got back to our bikes but it was lots of fun! took us about 20 mins to walk 600 m to the cave.
unfortunately i have had a sore throat for about a week now and i cant seem to kick it, and have run out of home remedies so this is now my 3rd day of hanging out watching Friends and movies and hoping to get better.. i guess at least this is the best town to be sick in as you dont have to walk far at all for internet, movies and food, and the place is teeming with tourists and people to talk to.
My friend Ollie has requested that i provide you all with a link of where i am so go to http://maps.google.co.nz/maps?f=q&hl=en&geocode=&q=Vang+Vieng,+Laos&sll=19.8841,102.141602&sspn=0.012268,0.022659&ie=UTF8&z=16&iwloc=A
Anyway must get going the internet here is really expensive being a tourist town. Also Fabio left the other day so my accomodation has doubled in price from NZ$1.875 to $3.75 a night. lol. (that in cludes two single beds, and my own bathroom with a fantastic hot shower..).
much love,
Ingrid
Ingrid
i have also uploaded some more photos onto www.bebo.com/ingridjones
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