The majority of our group made it safely to Laos, making our way up to Pakse in search of a cash machine where we spent a couple of nights trying to contact the sixth member of our clan before going south again to the Four-thousand Islands of the Mekong River. For those who don't remember i left you with the cliffhanger of leaving Tino in Cambodia, who had sobered up and decided to meet us, but we fretted because we told him to meet us on one island but we changed our mind on arrival. We headed to Dom Det only to find the lucky little bugger roaming the streets. Only Tin would end up on the one right island out of four-thousand. Happy to be reunited we spent a hazy few days there chilling in the Sun and eating "happy food" all day, as that is all there was to do.
We then ventured up through Laos, spending many nights in random places in search of the Konglor Cave. After finally finding it we got there too late to take the boat tour through, but did not remain to do it the next day as the North London derby was on, so we went to the capital city of Vientiane instead where we would instead find satellite television. Well worthwhile: 3-2 Spurs!
The next stop was the much anticipated Vang Vieng. For those who have not heard of it, it is a place to drink buckets of alcohol and float down a river in a tractor inner tube. Along the way there are rope swings and mud volleyball and music and dancing and games and everything else you might think of which is fun... then there is night time. James and I got jobs there where we were paid in food and buckets to basically go around and talk to people. Our plans to go northern Laos for jungle treks and home-stays were unfortunately abandoned because tubing was far too much fun and we spent two weeks there. Loas certainly lived up to the hype.
Someone asked me recently if you had been "tubing"... I'm actually more impressed that you survived two weeks of that, never mind an earthquake!
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