When we last left you we were about to go tubing down the mekong,and what a fab day we had,we paid the local mafia a nominal sum for a tube each,(these are giant tractor inner tubes)and got a tuk tuk to the river where we all launched ourselves in,from there on it was a meander down the river,every 2 minutes there was someone on the river bank shoting (beer lao)and trying to get you to grab the massive bamboo cane they were holding to drag you to their river side shack/bar for a refreshing ice cold beer lao.And they succeeded quite often,at these bars were jumps of about 15 feet into the water and zip wires and rope swings so it was a good laugh,after a good 5 hours we were a bit worse for wear so we floated to shore and got a tuk tuk to take us the 500 yards back to town.For a much needed curry and a snooze.
Vang Vieng itself is like no other place we have been,its a dodgy little backwater town aimed purely for the western backpacker,every bar plays friends dvd's on a continuous loop and serves up (special) food or (happy) food,the special food was laced with marijuana and the happy food was magic mushrooms,and it wasn't just the food it was drinks too.So it was a bit of a gamble at night where to eat.The town was surrounded by the most amazing limstone cliffs covered with lush green jungle,we were deep in cobra country and this was evident in a lot of shops as you could buy a bottle of cobra whisky with a dead cobra in the bottle.It was pretty gross.In fact it was rank.Not as rank however as our bbq experience,we were wandering along eating a chicken on a stick looking for more to eat when we stopped at a bbq stall,and on it was pig intestines and other local treats,turning our noses up at that one we were drawn to another stall with beautiful smells coming from it,pointing to the meat and asking what kind of meat it was the young girl pointed to a dog...we couldn't bring ourselves to try it but all agreed it did smell amazing.
Next day we got the VIP 24 seater air conditioned mini bus to Vientiene,or i should say the sardine like non air con bone shaker.This journey has made our top 5 bad jouneys list.It was bad....the transport in Laos is terrible everything is dodgy and the roads, they are dirt roads with a splattering of tarmac,so its just as well it was only a three hour journey,but when your on the bus and driver wants to stop for lunch and a drink well 3 hours can turn into 5,but we did make it to the capitol city of Vientiene,to be fair it had some lovely buildings and a mini (arc de triomphe)and a lovely city centre,but the roads were of the dirt variety.Laos is a very poor country indeed and the people will do anything to make a dollar,for example i went to a shop for some cans of coke and was offerd Ganja,ladies,boys,and the disabled shopkeeper even offerd himself..tempted as i was i declined his offer of sex and drugs.
We were travelling now with Bradley and Jamie as our other companions were heading to south Laos.So after a couple nights in Vientiene eating what we hoped was pork noodle soup we headed over the friendship bridge and arrived back in Thailand.We got our train tickets for the sleeper train to Bangkok and settled into a bar for our train was not leaving for 7 hours,so Bradley Pitt and Jamie Lee gave us a crash course in speaking Thai to help us save some money by not paying farang prices,farang is the thai name for us westerners.So eventually we got going on the sleeper train and it was a long old night,we got to Bangkok and we were dog tired so we found a hotel and crashed out.
In bangkok we do the most excitng things like laundry and booking tickets and making decisions on where to go next.We hummed and hawed for 3 days and opted for a couple of weeks on the beach as we have been on the go for ever now,So it farewell to our teacher friends and hello 3rd class train seat.It was 8 hours to Chumphon and we were the main attraction being the only farangs in 3rd class.But we had a great laugh with the locals as we practised our thai on them.We got to Chumphon and bought our ferry tickets to Koh Tao for the next morning.
And so we sit just now in Koh Tao,we have done a couple of dives and they were fantastic,gorgeous soft and hard corals,schoals of yellow tipped baracuda's and fusiliers,parrot fish and scorpion fish,and the water temp was an amazing 33 degrees.
so we will love you and leave you for now...............
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