101 Challenges:

Yesterday, we arrived in Vang Vieng after a 4 hour mini-bus journey from Luang Prabang. It was surprisingly rather nice – for once. We jumped aboard and much to our happiness, we found seats with enough leg room to allow us to lay back and stretch out. Bliss. We even had some music to listen to – an Australian lad hooked up his i-pod to the in-car-entertainment-system (a cassette player from the 70’s) and we were treated to some of Ozzy-lands greatest unknown artists. Some were good – the majority were crap. Still, it was better than nothing and so we bounced along Laos hilly roads humming and making up words to a few tunes here and there.

The scenery we passed through was mind blowing and we even managed to stop a couple of times to buy some food stuff and mingle with the locals – here’s a few cute kids (for the ladies) and much to the astounded jaw dropping surprise of Lee, Lindsay for once, gave away some food! Nice of him to do so – this poor lass loved it (it later turned out that Lindsay never did this gesture of goodwill out of any goody-goodyness. He only gave it away because it was rank!)

Back in 2007, before we left Scotland – we made continuous blogs and forum entries all over the webernet in efforts to promote our little ole site. Loads of people replied to our posts and even emailed us directly – offering helpful suggestions, tips and advice as well as giving us loads of challenge ideas and everything else.

Well… one pr*ck wasn’t so positive. Instead of helping fellow humans, he decided to take the w*nk stance and slated every single thing we were embarking to do. His name is Mr Nicky and he works at Hotel Babylon in Vang Vieng.

We visited the premises to “speak” with this guy and hopefully make “peace” with the lad – unfortunately though (for us? for him?) he wasn’t there on the day we came a knocking on his door. Still – we’ll definitely be back in VV so the money spent on those ninja tools won’t go completely to waste. We love you Mr Nicky.

Apparently (according to anonymous people we spoke with within the hotel) it’s crap. Not our opinion – just a random 6 people we spoke with who’s names we never collated.

We did meet a nice person instead though. She went by (and probably still does) the name of Mia and was (and always will be) from Japan. We sat and spoke with her for a while as we were booking into our hotel when out of the blue, she offered to sing us a song. Voice of an Angel but no Japanese Rachel;

You see, Lindsay’s has two reoccurring dreams. One is dying in a plane crash. This dream skips it’s way into Lindsay’s sleepy head about twice every month and has done so since around about 1996. The other is that he will find true love with a girl (unlikely) of Japanese orientation (very unlikely as he can’t even score with a western gal) and who goes by the name of Rachel (highly unlikely if not implausible). In this dream which, probably by now is a nightly occurrence, Lindsay and Japanese Rachel have the sweetest relationship the world has ever known. JR laughs at all his jokes, can make an amazing stir-fry and together they dance and jump through summer meadows. The search continues.

We went tubing today on the river Song and it was one of the best experiences we’ve had in a long time. Never have we been so chilled, so amazed at the surrounding beautiful scenery, so joyous, care free and fun loving and, so intoxicated all at the same time.

We collected an inner tube from no doubt a lorry tyre which thankfully was already inflated for us so there was no need for us to blow it up. A short Tuk-Tuk journey from the centre of town later and we were merely a few miles up the river. Here, we and around 8 friends that we had met on the numerous bus and boats we’ve used since leaving Thailand and in and around Laos itself, we entered the calm waters of the beautiful green and crisp river.

The tranquillity was to last around 2 minutes. This was solely due to the fact that make shift bars have been set up all along the banks of the river and so, we obviously stopped at the first one we came to. Here we purchased a few beers and were given free shots of something alcoholic in content. We never, ever ask what these free shots are – they’re free and that’s all we’ll ever need to know. After these nice wee drinks we proceeded to throw ourselves off a zip-line thingymajig. All perfectly safe, at this point anyway.

This was much the pattern of the day. We tubed for a little while then stopped off at a bar for a beer or two. Music pumped from every twist and bend on the river (well, we say music. There was a constant mix of everything from Happy Hardcore to Indie) each of the bars and the atmosphere was electric. There were hundreds of people on the river and every single one of them was having the time of their lives – us especially!

Probably even more amazing was that we stumbled across the world's youngest bar tender. Child labour – not necessarily a bad thing if it helps you get served quick!

At one bar Lindsay attempted to shake off the girly image he’s managed to impose on himself and so, threw his far from aerodynamic mass of a body off a swing that no other white person would do and this rather entertaining act came much to the detriment of his right bum cheek – he landed squarely on a rock which was covered by no more than 4 foot of water.

The Laosonians have a great view of health and safety laws but, unfortunately for any tourists willing to embark on any of their adventure-type-swings and zip-lines, that view of the principles of health and safety are obscured by huge signs offering free jumps when you buy drink. Amazing really.

Viang Vieng has to be the most amazing place we’ve seen so far. The small town is overlooked by huge mountainous ranges on each of its sides and everything to see is so colourful, so enchanting and so perfect in every sense – on top of this, a huge bottle of Beer Laos is less than 75p – it’s almost heaven on earth! In fact it is heaven on earth.

The night that followed the day of floating, jumping, swinging, swimming, dancing, jumping and drinking brought us a rather bizarre fascination with blue toilet pipes. A Dutch lad by the name of Ray introduced us to these wonderous phenomenon and we haven't stopped taking photos of them since;

 

We then returned back to our table and told all the lads of our amazing find. Everyone was well impressed except from our friend Jonus (or Joenus or Johnous or Yonus) from who looks rather upset at the fact that we found them first;

Oh, and our body hair still isn’t growing back quick enough – despite spending £18 each on Just For Men Hair Replenisher.