Saturday 12 May:
Carl woke up this morning feeling, and being, very sick so we spent all day watching TV on our bed. I knocked next door to explain to Thomas and Johanna why we had been so unsociable and discovered that Thomas had the same sickness and Johanna and I had the same diziness. It must have been from the steak. Thomas and Carl had theirs close to raw.
Sunday 13 May:
We visited Kuang Si Waterfall today which was really nice with beautiful, clear swimming lagoons surrounding it. There were wooden bridges deviding each lagoon. The place was stunning. The water was freezing. Before we reached the waterfall there was a bear rescue centre and a tiger rescue centre which we looked around.
Afterwards we had a really boring afternoon at L'Entranger Books and Teas. It was basically a bookshop downstairs with a cafe upstairs which boasted to have over sixty different flavoured teas. It didn't. Everything I asked for wasn't available. I looked on the shelf and they had about thirty different teas which was still impressive. So we just drank tea and read our new books on comfortable cushions on the floor. It was great. Afterwards Thomas had his hair cut by a hairy lady boy and Carl and I relaxed in the wine bar.
Monday 14 May:
We rented bikes and cycled to a swimming pool which belonged to Villa Santi Resort which was only a couple of kilometres away but we still got lost. We had to pay for the privilege of swimming in this dirty pool which was very cheeky of them considering no one was staying here. In the evening we ate at a restaurant which was a bit of disaster. Thomas ordered chicken which he waited absolutely ages for and got fish instead so it got returned to the kitchen and when I ordered my second plate of chips they had scooped the chips from off the fish which Thomas returned and served me those. Needless to say that they didn’t taste like chips. They tasted like fishy chips.
Tuesday 15 May:
We all caught the minibus to Vang Vieng and after looking around for what seemed like ages we found a hotel which was only nine days old. We would thoroughly recommend it but unfortunately it didn’t even have a name at the time. Plus there was no furniture in the room and the mattress was just sat on the floor but the balcony and view of the river was great and the staff were really friendly.
Wednesday 16 May:
Johanna was very poorly with a fever so me, Carl and Thomas rented bikes with the intention of cycling to some caves which we were told were only two kilometres away and then swim in the watering hole. The caves were actually seventeen kilometres away through remote villages and it was really hard work because of the heat. Plus everytime we asked someone how to get there they gave us different directions so we ended up crossing the river several times and getting lost all over again. All we needed to do was just stay on the road we had started on. We also encountered the most evil ants alive. They were really big and orange and when they bit us it really, really hurt. When we tried to shake them off they just dug their legs into our skin and kept biting. Very painful. We did stop off at a bar along the way and the bar happened to be one of the bars on the ‘tubing’ route.
Tubing: You hire a tractor tyre inner tube and get driven to the top of the river in a tuk-tuk where you sail back down in the tube. There are bars along the way and the staff pull you in with a bamboo stick or swim out to you and drag you in. The whole thing can last all day and night if you want it to.
The bar we stopped off at for a cold coke had a really high rope swing with lots of drunk people jumping from it. A girl came up to us and asked if we could fix a broken nose. That’s how high the swing is but that's also how drunk the people were.
After a few hours of cycling we arrived at the caves but it was too late in the day to have a proper tour of them because we had to cycle back again before dark. We got taken into Tham Loup cave (a small cave) and Tham Hoi which is the massive cave (over 4 km deep) so we paid for a tour guide. Tham Hoi was huge and the guide said that he had spent a whole week in there trying to find how far back it goes. When we came back out of the caves the guide told us that we had to pay for the lights he lent us, even though mine didn’t work, and also for the extra guide who wasn’t really a guide (he was the guide’s mate) and this ‘guide’ didn’t even talk. We paid a half of what they asked and then did a runner.
Thursday 17 May:
A very pointless day updating the blog in the day and watching a very pointless film called Ghost Rider which stars Nicholas Cage. A big ball of crap.
Friday 18 May:
All four of us went tubing and had such a drunken laugh. We left at 12pm and didn’t get back until 7pm and during that time we guzzled god knows how many large bottles of beer each and buckets of spirits. It started off a really nice sunny day but after twenty minutes the rain came and it pretty much stayed that way. Carl and I did a few rope swings and we did one together as well. Carl was meant to tell me when to jump but he didn’t so I was left hanging for what seemed like ages until I realised that there was no other way down but to jump. And Carl kept screaming ‘now, now, now’. When we finished tubing we were the last ones and it was dark. We were a complete mess so we all had an early night.
Saturday 19 May:
We had the worst three hour bus ride to Vientiene (capital of Laos) because of our hangovers. We were really quiet and hardly spoke to each other and swore never to drink again – or at least have a day off from drinking. We found what we thought was a great place to eat which was spread over four floors. The menu looked fab. Full of Western food like bangers and mash, steak and kidney pie, etc. But whatever we asked for on the menu they didn’t have. I asked for three things that they didn't have. We didn’t return to this place again. We booked into a guesthouse called BPP but realised that every time we wanted to go to a restaurant or a pub we literally had to cross a shitty road. Workers were digging up the main road and there were open drains everywhere. It was really disgusting so we all booked into Riverside Hotel for the next night. Everything shut at about 9pm which was rubbish. You could go into the Johnny Walker bars but you couldn’t see inside and it says in the Lonely Planet that if you can’t see inside that’s because it’s full of dirty old men and hookers.
Sunday 20 May:
We moved over to our nice hotel which was the good side of shit street but in the evening we found that the only decent late night bar was Khop Chai Deu on the wrong side of shit street so we had to cross it again. It was in this bar that we decided to get drunk.
Monday 21 May:
Somehow I managed to sleep with my ear folded over so woke with the biggest earache. Carl and I walked to the Cambodian Embassy to try to get our visas. We didn’t realise it was that far away but ended up walking for about an hour only for the miserable woman behind to desk to tell us that she only did visas in the morning. All she needed to do was to stamp our passports but that was too much work for the lazy cow. She told us to come back tomorrow morning but we didn’t want to give her our money so didn’t go back. We were stuck in this place and really wanted to get out of Laos. Thomas and Johanna had booked their twenty two hour bus journey to Hoi An and there was no way on this earth me and Carl would be getting on that bus with them. So we decided to fly to Vietnam and sort out our Cambodia visa from there. We were going to do the south of Laos but decided that we had had enough.
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