Day 76

Sunday 16^th January 2011

I had known today wasn’t going to be fun when I fell asleep last night next to my drunken husband. I hadn’t banked on the fact that I would be waking up at 6.30am next to a still drunk husband!!!

I did a quick sweep of the room as we left, not entirely trusting of Franky’s drunken packing capabilities. He frequently manages to leave something behind when completely sober but miraculously it appeared that he had done well and we had all our belongings with us as we got into a Barbie pink taxi to head back to Bangkok airport.

Immigration to leave Thailand took 3 times as long as it did to enter but we were finally through at 8.30am. This gave us less than an hour to get some food and try and get internet access to sort a hotel out in our destination. We had a sandwich and found a nice looking hotel in Vang Vieng. After the box room in Bangkok we’d decided to splash out and treat ourselves so we booked a deluxe double for £30 a night. We’d literally just hit the ‘Confirm’ button on the booking when a little Thai lady popped up with a sign for the final call for our flight – for some unknown reason they’ve done away with the PA system at Bangkok airport and so have lots of these little Thai ladies running around the huge terminal building with different signs for whichever flight was on its final call. We were herded onto a bus to board our flight to Laos.

The plane was a tiny little propeller jobber but it got us to Vientiane in just an hour and 20 mins.

Franky’s hangover was kicking in and he wasn’t a happy boy as we queued for the visa to enter Laos. Interestingly the cost of the Visa varies depending on your country of origin. We had to pay $35 each, the Chinese were the best off paying only $20 and the Canadians the worst – they were charged $42. I’m not sure what Canada has done to upset Laos!

Once we’d cleared customs with our bags we had the prospect of how to get to Vang Vieng. By far the cheapest option would be to go to the bus station on the other side of Vientiane and get the bus. The Lonely planet website had told me that this journey would take between 4 and 6 hours. However, we were offered a direct taxi from the airport for just £50. I took one look at my hungover husband and made the decision…. 2 minutes later we were in an old battered Toyota heading North.

My first impressions of Laos were that it was very much like India. A road through ther town with no pavements so pedestrians take their lives into their own hands. The drivers are all mental and use the horn to tell people when they are overtaking… with little regard for whether or not it is actually safe to do so. There are also cows meandering over the road to add to the chaos.

We passed a sign saying Vang Vieng was 140 km away. We ambitiously estimated that we’d be there in a couple of hours. How wrong we were!

We randomly stopped at the taxi driver’s home where we picked up a bloke who seemed to be a friend, and two kids! The friend sat in the front passenger seat and the kids were crammed in the boot with our backpacks. I’m not sure why they were joining us on our trip. The driver’s wife seemed very impressed when he told her we were all off to Vang Vieng… I’m not surprised since our 3 stowaways were doing the trip for free!

Laos is much cooler than Thailand. We left 32^oC Bangkok and switched it for 18^oC. But it is sunny so I’m not complaining!

We quickly learned that the distance markers were quite arbitrary. We passed a sign saying Vang Vieng was 27km away. We were travelling at about 60km an hour which was as fast as was possible given the terrible roads and yet 25 mins later we passed a sign saying Vang Vieng was now 20km away. Another 45 mins and we were down to 5km – which took a further 30mins!!!! But we eventually arrived about 3 hours after we had left Vientiane – shaving a potential 3 hours off the bus journey. This was the equivalent to getting in a taxi in Manchester and saying ‘London please’ but for £50 it was well worth it!

We checked in and left the crammed car – I guess the 4 boys just headed home and continued their road trip?! At least the kids could get out of the boot for the return trip!

We checked in and were pleasantly surprised with the room. It was lovely and spacious. We even had a bath – yay! The courtyard looked out over the beautiful limestone mountains that surround Vang Vieng.

Franky had a shower and went to sleep off his hangover and I decided to try out the bath. Unfortunately the hotel doesn’t really do hot water so I had a tepid soak.

We ventured out for some tea and a wander round town. It’s quieter than I was expecting…. and a lot colder now the sun has gone down. There were numerous trucks bringing drunken people back from tubing on the Nam Song River outside of town. This is why we’ve come to Vang Vieng. Basically you hire a tractor inner tube and then get a lift upstream. You jump into the river in your tube and float back down towards the town. There are a number of bars along the way so it’s basically a watery bar crawl. We’ve booked our tubing trip for tomorrow and now we’re back in the room frantically typing up the blog. We’ve managed to get a full week behind which is a mammoth task to catch up on. The wifi is pretty sketchy in the room so the plan is to get it typed ready to post tomorrow and then go to bed. Night!