We got a bus transfer, just a short one to Vang Vieng. Olly and I are now so used to travelling for 8 to 14 hours in one go a little 4 or 5 hour bus journey is nothing. Its a sleepy, empty sort of ghost like place, once home to some of the most extreme tubing in the world. Unfortunately due to a large amount of Australians dying in 2012, the tubing although still running is nowhere near as extreme. Bars everywhere just playing friends on repeat was strange... people just order food and chill out on futons all day watching it.
We booked the tubing the next day which starts in the afternoon and goes on until 5/6 in the evening. We met some really cool people and floated about 5 minutes down the river and stopped off at the first bar which was empty and lifeless. Soon enough lots of people were turning up, there were volleyball nets and all sorts. The second bar was much more lively, it was raining by this point so muddy banks became mudslides and instead of people playing ball games, mud was being launched left right and center. We played our first game of beer pong and lost badly. The third bar was even more lifeless than the first and we just shared a few buckets with the guys we'd met. I was absolutely hammered by this point, not sure floating down a river in a tube was a good idea, but I was loving it. We got out back in the center, with a few cuts and bruises, but some awesome memories. All the photos for this our on my iphone as the camera wasn't allowed tubing.
In the evening we went out to the Irish bar, may the party never end!!!!
We wanted to rent a moped the next day, a manual was soooo much cheaper than an automatic so Olly feeling a little worse for ware braved it and hired the manual having never ridden one before. Firstly the gas ran out so we ended up pushing it about 2km to the nearest gas station, and then when we finally got going, we realised it was probably the dodgiest manual ever, old, knackered and basically a big pile of shit.
However, it did make it to the Poukham caves which is where we wanted to go. We walked for a while up this beautiful clear stream that was home to an abundance of amazingly gorgeous butterflies.
A great place to park don't you think?
When we made it to the caves we were guided by a straggly old gentlemen who was wearing ripped clothes and carrying a bag of strange things... He smelt weird and didn't talk much but he guided us around the caves well, although at points i did think he was going to lead us in to the darkness and murder us. The spiders in there were like nothing I'd ever seen, I was petrified, they were so big. No worries though as our 'guide' just bashed the shit out of them with his flip flop, many spiders died on this day....
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