Vientiane, Laos

Well we Tuk Tuk'ed and kayaked down to Vientiane, It was a nice enjoyable trip, a few bigish rapids but nothing scary. It sure was heaps better then getting spewed on in a local bus. The day before had been really good, we got dropped off up river and kayaked down, the scenery was fucking amazing. Crazy hills jutting out of bright green rice paddies, It was a fairly relaxing and beautiful few hours of paddling. We stopped off to do a quick inner tube mission into a cave, an underwater river. The cave wasn’t amazing but it was still a cool experience floating about in an underwater river is aways gonna have atleast novelty value. We had lunch and then saw the Elephant Cave. The Elephant cave was pretty lame, like if it was at a mates place you would think it was cool, but when a tour guide takes you there it was a bit “oh is this it, ohh, ok” it did have a Buddha statue and stuff in it, and one of the rocks looked a bit like an elephant.
Near the end of the trip we arrived into the area of the river where they do the tubing. The general gist (It’s the main thing people do in Vang Vieng) is you hire an inner tube, get a Tuk Tuk to drop you off up the river a bit, jump in and float down. Of cause one of the greatest things about Laos is Beer Lao, and some of the great places you get to drink it. This is definitely one of them, you get to float down a river with little bars along the way, and each bar has something special to get the tourists in, a big swing, flying fox, or just something high to jump of into the river. The people at the bars have huge bamboo poles they use to help drag people onto dry land so they can drink more Beer Lao. The bar we spent a bit of time at had a fairly good sized flying fox and you could also jump off the platform the flying fox was attached to. It reminded me of down b the river during Earthcore, big stereo, sunny weather and loads of beer. It was fucking cool. I think it takes most people about 4 or 5 hours to do the trip, although that only involves about half an hour of floating time.
I also got to teach an English class that evening as well, it was pretty cool. I was nervous and didn’t really have a lot to say. I did months of the year with the little kids, they were pretty cool, very eager to learn. I started doing telling the time, and clocks and shit with the older ones, but then just talked about Australia and what I’m doing travelling around. Nearly all of them were very shy and didn’t want to ask any questions, but bit by bit a few did. I sorta ran through my answers and wrote them up on the whiteboard and helped explain any of the less common words I had used.
All in all it was very cool, I could really imagine doing a solid two weeks next time I’m in the area. It would be heaps better once you get to know the kids and know what sorta levels they are at.
For the lat few days we have just been chilling out and drinking in Vientiane, we spent a bit of time with an aussie called Kate who we had met kayaking. She is just about to finish 2 years of work in Cambodia, and said it was all pretty amazing there. Mainly we have been drinking at this Mexican bar with Rowena and David from England. A few Beer Lao and then a mission to some other bar for a few more Beer Lao. Today we applied for our Vietnamese visas and then tried to head out to the Beer Lao brewery, but were too late to take a tour. Hopefully we’ll get another chance.
Tomorrow I hope to get a bike nice and earlyish and go motorbike up to the Plain of Jars, I’m thinking I’ll spend the few days it takes for our visas to get processed. It would be nice to be out of the cities for a while.

Cheerio,
Will Cowan