Tubes!

We are now in Luang Prabang in Laos after a nightmare drive from Vang Vieng, more on that later.

We arrived in Vang Vieng on Wednesday after a public bus journey that was accentuated by a flat tyre. Only an hour into the drive we pulled into the side of the road as one of the tyres has blown out. After standing around for an hour in the sun we were finally able to get going again... on a five minute drive up the road to the nearest garage, to fix the other tyre! What had happened was, when they took off the flat, the spare was a good 10 inches bigger in diameter than the other tyre whichsits alongside it! So it was taken to a garage to be properly repaired! Finally we were on our way again and three short hours later we arrived in Vang Vieng.

Not much to Vang Vieng. During the Vietnam war it was used as an airstrip by the Americans. Now it is three streets with tourist shops and tat and bars. It is all geared up for kayaking and tubing, which is where you float down the river on an innertube. Apart from that there is basically nothing else to do.

We decided to go tubing as it seemed like a bit of a laugh. It wasn't. ' nuff said... It was ok at first, the scenery is amazing its all limestone mountains and jungle by the river and its pretty impressive with all the hills rising up into the clouds. There are several bars dotted along the river and we, sensibly, only stopped at one of them and had one drink. It was after this our adventure went down hill.

So there we were merrily bobbing along the river, when it started to get a bit faster, out of nowhere a big half submerged tree trunk loomed ahead. We couldn't avoid it and ended up on top of it. This was ok, till we tried to move and both ended up in the river! We both got dragged under, I felt Charlotte and managed to push her away from the log and she floated free with the two tubes, luckily she was also wearing a life-jacket. I got sucked under and pinned against the tree for a wee while, but managed to wriggle free and pop my heid back above water and breathe actual air with actual oxygen in it! We both got a bit of a fright but are ok. I am now sans watch and sunglasses, I managed to rescue my flip-flops! Unfortunately, our camera was in a "dry" bag and got, well, wet. It is currently recuperating inside a bag of rice. Luckily the video camera takes still photos.

It was quite the harrowing experience.

The next day things went from bad to worse. Luckily it was only worse for other people and not us! We left our hotel in Vang Vieng at 8am by private mini-van for a 6-ish hour drive to Luang Prabang. The song "long and winding road" comes to mind because not only was this road long, it also wound! It also went up and down and had a surface similar to the moon's! The scenery was awesome though, but people's mind's were elsewhere.

Charlotte and Katrina were both sick several times, which added to everyone's enjoyment of the journey. Our tour leader, Mim, had also been feeling unwell and as she has been anaemic in the past, it was put down to this or just a bit of flu. If only. At one of our rest stops, about halfway through the trip she fainted. As soon as we got to Luang Prabang she had to go to Hospital where she was diagnosed with Dengue Fever. This is similar to malaria, only there is no cure, other than bed rest and drinking lots of fluids. She was in hospital over night and has spent today in bed in the hotel. Nothing like a night in hospital in a third world country to boost your spirits! She is going to stay here and rest up and meet us in Chiang Mai in a couple of days.

Today was better. We got up before dawn to walk into town to see the monks receiving alms from the local people. This is where buddhist monks all walk a circuit around the town and the people of the town get up early to give them all of their food for the day. Luang Prabang is one of the few places left where this is still done daily as a tradition. It does still happen in other places but apparently its a bit of a circus put on for the tourists. It is quite a sight to see hundreds of orange clad, shaven headed men walking the streets at sunrise and to see the amount of local people who turn out to give the monks food.

We also went to a temple on top of a hill this morning, which was a long and sweaty climb, but it gave us an awesom view of the town. We also went to another temple called Wat Xien Thong. This afternoon we went by tuk-tuk to Kuong Si Waterfall. It was massive and you could swim in some of the pools nearby. However visibility was about 3 inches and there were all sorts of foot nibbling fish, so we gave that part a miss. Nearby was a bear sanctuary, as there is still a huge illegal animal trade in most of Asia, so they had Asiatic Black Bears that had been rescued and were in a huge enclosure. They are also building a similar thing for tigers.

This evening we went to the night market, ate some street food and bought some presents. We are back to Thailand tomorrow. The reason we haven't updated in a couple of days is, in the last town we had to pay for internet by the minute and yesterday we were busy dealing with drama queens and malingerers.

Don't worry about us after our traumatic near death experience, we are absolutely fine. Hope everyone at home is ok! Speak soon!