…The fishy massage/spa thing… not so relaxing as expected. VERY weird feeling… and they sucked off all the tan from my legs that i had been working very hard on, meaning I was left with silly white ankles. booo- still fun though ! And… the overnight V.I.P bus turned out to be a success!- although we very nearly didn’t make it due to our crazy raving tuk tuk driver who was on some kind of revenge mission against a guy who had overtaken us. To be fair it was WELL fun and there were loads of flashy lights and we kept switching sides of the road to jump traffic- red light- pah! no worries… eek!
But we made it. And the bus was almost on time… with loadsssss of leg room, working air con… free food and drink (even if it was yucky soy milk) and blankets, so i reckon we both managed to get our 8-hours! good times 
Arrived bright and early in a place called Udon Thani where we had to change buses… however, pretty much no-one spoke english so we just kinda followed a couple of other backpackers and waited until a man jumped off a bus shouting Nong Khai (where we wanted to go) and signalled so we went for it. It cost 60p for an almost 2-hour journey… what a rip off first york is!
Arrived in Nong Khai (a border town between thailand and laos) and got a tuk tuk to a guesthouse recommended by the trusty guidebook— soooo glad we didn’t forget to bring it!… It even had a little picture thing which means specially recommended! This place was amazinggggggg, but so strange. Like.. a haven in the middle of nowhere and a receptionist from leeds- lol. It had a really chilled out garden thing with hammaocks overlooking the river, which we had to wait in while they waited for a room to become available, which it did- phew. 8 pounds a night between which was a lil’ expensive admittedly (proper pushing the boat out!) but woah… We knew it was going to be good when the receptionist said… this is my favourite room… the one with the jungle shower :):)
Although it was tempting to chill in the hammocks alllll day, eating the yummy food available, we decided to DO something with our lives so we rented bicycles and cycled to this sculpture park… I know– very sophisticated and cultural it wasn’t a long cycle and there were no hills which was good else i probably would have failed epically but we found the place after not tooo long and it was cool~! Check out the photos there were loads of buddhas and crazy monster things (that is the technical terminology!) not really sure how to describe it. And there was also this thing called the circle of life.. see below.. where toby is about to walk through the “penis”
We cycled back and had a yummy yummy fruit shake, by accident really… i wanted watermelon and toby wanted apple, but obviously we didn’t explain well enough because we got one apple and watermelon shake! MMMM indeed, and we only had to pay for one 
:D
That night we went on a river cruise to watch the sunset on the mekong river… just because we could 
and it was only 2 quid!
It was a short stay at Mut Mee (the guesthouse) as we were off to LAOS- whoop another country and this time we got a whole page of our passport taken up by a visa- result!- even though we had to pay 35$ for it… It wasn’t a very stressful crossing and on the other side we somehow managed to get an hour long tuk tuk ride for 80p We had planned to go to the capital vientiene to stay for a night or two… but somehow or another our minds changed and the tuk tuk driver had us on a bus to Vang Vieng within 15 mins of arriving. Vang Vieng is where we are now- a couple of days later, very chilled place, also very weird. We drove through literally nothing for almost 4 hours on one very windy road and ended up here with loads of bars and restaurants playing friends back to back 24/7. We tried hard to resist but this morning caved over breakfast and had a peek at a sneaky episode… or three! The main reason people come here.. and the thing we had been very excited about when planning the trip…is to go tubing down the river- which we did yesterday.
You pay to rent your rubber ring then get dropped off at the river where very loud bass is pumping and there are loads of bars offering free shots and throwing bottles at you with string attached hoping to reeel you in. Mostly they just hit me in the face and made we want to paddle away nice and quickly. Anyways, it was a very hard 5 hours as we floated, stopping for drinks along the way, then floated some more…then there were some cows in the river we had to float past (very scary~~!) but we made it and eventually found our way back to the tube rental place after an unhelpful kid helped us out the river at the wrong place then asked for money
Toby: Polly, don’t give him the 50,000 (yes we are millionaires here:)… 12,000 is one pound!
Polly: I’m not going to!
Kid: Yes, yes, 50,000
To be fair… if i had had like a 10,000 or something i may have given it to him, but i only had 50,000s and a 1,000, which he looked at with disdain, but agreed to take after he realized he wasn’t going to get anything else from us.
Chilled in the bars last night – they had funky seating areas raised so you can lie down and eat basically…but they alll have EXACTLY the same menu with the same prices and look so it could be a bit more interesting. We wont mention the fact that the first night we went for tea (spag bol and beer) then crossed the road and Toby had the exact same (spagbol again)…. say it with me now…. FATTY!- i at least went for pancake on my second tea
They also have HAPPY menus everywhere here, and there is often a certain odour in the air ( i think you know what i mean)…hint: Bob Marley is played everywhere. We haven’t partaken just in case you were worried I reckon thats about it really, today has been hard work, woke up late, went for brekkie, bought some touristy tshirts (yay i wont smell anymore) and are now writing this. Pics of Nong Khai are up… will be adding the ones from here when we’ve taken some hehe.
Toby says hi as he reclines next to me in his sleeveless beer lao vest top (what a traveller!)
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I’m sure they would have been yummy and irish. As for Sarah- you HOON! To be fair… we did “Look it up on your IIII-phone” and apparently it is a real word!