Vang Vieng and Vientiene

Vang Vieng is probably Laos most popular tourist destination and it shows. Restaurants in the area play friends and family guy dvds all day every day and the mix of drunk or recovering tourists sprawl around everywhere. Tubing is the thing to do here and apart from that there isn't a whole lot else to be seen. That said, tubing was unreal fun floating down the river all day stopping at bars for a beer or a swing into the river. On the day we did it we didnt get back until around 8:30 when it was well and truly dark. And we had another fun night out there drinking buckets of free whisky until 4am. The only problem is that seeing this sort of thing in Laos, and participating in it as we did, seems to be a depressing look into the future of Laos tourism slowly going the way of Southern Thailand. Once we had done our day tubing and visited a nice freshwater spring that runs out of one of the nearby caves, Ciaran and I were more than ready to say goodbye to Vang Vieng and its seedy atmosphere.
Vientiene, Laos capital city, is as busy as it gets in Laos. Luckily, this translates to still being less busy then islands like Phuket or Koh Samui. Not a whole lot to do in Vientiene but the Buddha Park was really interesting, and I also went to the water park when I was feling hungover for some pretty fun waterslides... what an 'off the beaten track thing to do', haha. It was in Vientiene that I also met with up with a mate from home for two weeks and it was nice to see a familiar face, and to catch up we headed out partying with a big group of random tourists that had slowly formed throughout the night to a packed Laos nightclub that had more lasers bouncing around than in a star wars film. on the way to the club I managed to climb on the roof of the Tuk Tuk and get a bit of a surf in through the windy streets...
Oh yeah, I should also mention that we met a celebrity of sorts, runner up for Malaysian Idol from some years back who joined us at our table for a few post performance drinks. It was one of the best nights out i've had in a while...