Vang Vieng

Arrived in Vang Vieng after a nauseating mini bus ride. Found a nice guest house with air-con, hot water and a view (although you can't see much because it's so dusty/hazy here) for $10 a night. Then we roamed the streets to check out the town.

This is a backpacker town, plain and simple. River tubing is the thing to do here, you rent a tube and the river takes you down, you stop at bars, rope swings and slides along the way. But young tourists + super cheap beer/ alcohol + readily accessible hard drugs = death. Two Aussies died already this year and 22 people died on the river last year. The streets here are lined with bars that offer small cushioned areas and reruns of Friends or Family Guy. You can order "happy" or "magic" food, marijuana, mushrooms, opium and other drugs are offered on some menus if the food option isn't for you. If you do any sort of research before you arrive you know this but some times an unsuspecting person orders happy pancakes and has no idea what they got themselves into.

So what are the clean cut Blues doing here? Well we figured no time like the present to start in on the drug habit, when in Rome! Just kidding. Participating in an illicit international drug trafficking scene is actually not on my life list, crazy I know. This town only began being ruined in the last five years. There are other things to do besides die. We plan on doing a tour of some local caves (there are many) and we are going to tube down the river just minus the "local" whiskey and drugs.

There is this wonderful thing out there called the Internet, seriously I don't know how people went without it. I had sent a message to Sanna and Rebecca (the wonderful Scottish girls we met in Koh Phangan who rescued us from old age and got us to the Full Moon Party) to see how their trip was going as they had gone to Cambodia and Vietnam after we left them. Well they are going to be in Vang Vieng for three days so we get to link up with them! Fabulous! We are doing the gringo trail so after a month of traveling we have run into some people. We saw the American jerk we met on day 5 of traveling and we've ran into many people from our boat trip. Had a beer with a Spaniard we meet in LP and an American we met at breakfast in Pak Beng while we watched Friends from a cushioned booth. Good times here in Laos!