Raft away river

A little bit more about Laos. Speaking of surreal experiences, a couple of hours north of Vientiane is a tiny town called Vang Vien. It's set in a naturally beautiful area with limestone forested peaks framing the river winding past the couple of dirt roads that make up the town. These dirt roads are packed shoulder to shoulder with cafes with big screen TVs showing back-to-back episodes of Friends literally all day without a break. Having brekky at 7am, there's Friends. Wander past for a beer at 11pm, still Friends. And each place is showing a different episode so during the ten second silences between episodes you can catch a punchline or two from the place next door. I'd be surprised if the next generation of Laos children in the town aren't called Joey, Chandler, Phoebe, Rachel etc. Entertaining though when it rains all day.

These places also serve "happy" shakes, pizzas etc, so there's a lot of glazed-eyed travellers completely unable to peel themselves up off the cushions to avoid Ross's latest drama.

The coolest thing to do though is grab a giant tractor tyre inner-tube and jump in a tuk-tuk for a drive a few kms out of town where you jump in the river and float back among the incredible scenery for a couple of hours. Or half a day... the thing is that intrepid locals have set up bars all the way down the river. When I say bar, I mean a rickety bamboo shelter and a couple of crates of Beer Lao! Each of them also has a different way to hurl yourself into the river. A flying-fox (or zipline for you North Americans), a giant swing, a trusty old rope or simply an enormous cliff to leap off. The river's moving pretty fast so when you spy a bar you've got to paddle your hands frantically (and often futilely) and the bar providore will stretch out a long bamboo pole for you to attempt to grasp onto as you float past. It is a ridiculous amount of fun, especially when there's a few other travellers all in various states of pissedness floating, chatting and splashing about. We only did it three days in a row or so...