A tiny little village between Vientiane and Luang Prabang, huddled between the beautiful Nam Song river and rocky limestone cliffs is Vang Vieng. A few years ago this was home to just a handful of local villagers, a few goats and chickens and a big fat pot-bellied pig. With the influx of pale eighteen year old gap year holiday makers from Milton Keynes grabbing tractor inner tubes and getting drunk the government quickly saw the cash potential at hand. They wasted no time at all in forcibly rehousing the locals, building a rash of concrete hotels, pizza restaurants and tube hire shops. They already had a ready made theme, creating the theme park was the easy part.

Fancy some toooobing?

And so it was when Amanda and I arrived on a very very hot afternoon, checked into a hotel with undoubtedly the least comfortable bed in history (the Laos army uses their mattresses hilly contours for rough terrain training) and went for a look about.

It's a strange little place, a village that seems to exist only for tourism. The only locals work in a restaurant, a hotel, a tube inflation business, a bar, another bar... LOADS of travellers roam the streets, absolutely LOADS. All the internet cafe's, shops and restaurants were overpriced, most of the food available was western tucker or the fried rice/noodle local variety. Half the restaurants played Friends 24 hours a day, the other half played films, The Simpsons, Family Guy... whatever. It was a very odd place to be. I didn't hate it, don't misunderstand me, I didn't really feel anything about it at all. We decided to do the thing, tube down the river (tick in the box) and get out.

Nam Song and beautiful Laos

Obviously it didn't work out that way, we went for a few beers with a nice couple we met on the bus, woke up late and decided to walk to some nearby caves instead... oh the best laid plans...

Still I'm glad we did, they were cool, it was a weekend so all the local kids were out screaming at the tops of their lungs as the dived into the natural springs. A river flowed from one cave to a little pool, then to a big lake. We swam inside and felt like proper explorers, till the twelve year olds behind us showed up. Around the caves were some landscaped areas with cows and stuff so we lay a sarong on the grass and had a picnic (cornetto and bottle of mineral water) while we read our books in the shade. Families had turned up for a day out, there was a really nice chilled atmosphere.

How peacefull.... NOT!!!

The main caves were larger than I expected, and emptier too. Maybe we were lucky and caught it while no-one else was about. It had exits high on the cliff that gave panoramic views over the river valley. Nice and cool inside too which was great.

After that (and a well found Indian restaurant that night) all that was left to do was tube (dude). Managing to get up in better time I found myself incredibly unwell. I think it was the tuna sarnie I had the day before. You don't need to hear all the details but I was severely dehydrating and dizzy with it. I couldn't eat and had a hard time walking. So, covered with a sarong against the hot sun, armed with a big bottle of mineral water and some re hydration sachets I boarded my tube for the long trip down the river. While most of my fellow revellers swung from the banks and downed bottles of beer Laos and magic mushroom shakes and smoked their body weight in ganja I was trying hard not to throw up (some of the others might have been doing that too come to think about it). The river was lined with bars, and where there were no bars for 100 metres kids squatted on the shore with coolers brimmed full of beer. Obviously a good time was had by all.

Up the creek with only a flip flop!

The scenery was amazing. Green cliffs, soaring limestone towers, blue skies and blazing sun. Just what I needed to start feeling a bit better. In fact by three hours in I was beginning to feel a little more like myself. We got to a tuk-tuk stop where we had the choice of going back to town the easy way... I'm afraid I bottled it and took it. Not everything has to be seen through to the end and, to be honest I think we'd both seen enough... tick done, move on.