Bewitched

After spending a few nights in Laos's capital Vientiane, we felt very lethargic and chilled. It's a beautiful little town with a French feel to it. This may be because Laos was part of French Indo-China up until the 1950s. There are lovely bakeries, steak houses, nice promenades, greenery, interesting buildings. An obvious hot spot for middle aged couples. Our hotel closed at 11.30 every night, due to strict laws, so we ate well, slept well, took leisurely visits to temples and Buddha Park that hosts Buddhist statues with a Hindu twist to them.

Heaven.

So when we decided to head to Vang Vieng, three hours south, we stepped off the bus and thought we'd landed in hell.

Dusty, dirty, full of young drunk twenty somethings. So unlike sleepy Vientiane.

The food was hideous, we had to check out of our hotel after two days because of the insects - ants everywhere and cockroaches. We went to a lagoon and visited the caves and then thought we'd only stay a couple of days, then get the hell out of here.

That was until we went tubing and got a whole new perspective of the place!

What was once one man's poison became our meat, and we devoured it and stayed 18 days. Here are the reasons why we HATE to LOVE (and we do love) Vang Vieng......

1) The nightlife is great - Bucket Bar with free buckets, free shots of whiskey through a pineapple. So you get smashed for free. Good music too, the clubs play Electro House and Drum and Bass.

2) There are so many English people here, you feel like you're at home. Good, but I love a foreigner!

3) Despite the town's ugliness - it looks like it belongs in a Mediterranean 18-30s resort - it's surrounded by majestic mountains, lagoons and a meandering river.

4) The food isn't great, the service is slow. But there are a few hidden gems - Nazim's Indian restaurant and the salmon place next door.

5) The currency is ridiculous - 13000 Kip to the pound, but at the same time I've never had so many notes in my wallet at once!

6)The shopping is terrible. You mainly get things for tubing like 'waterproof' bags, that aren't waterproof. The underwear doesn't fit me, the flip flops are impossible to wear. We did manage to finally find some dresses though.

7) The lagoon is lovely but the roads to it are really bumpy. We took a Tuk Tuk to it one day and it nearly fell apart - literally - the seats in it collapsed.

8) There's not really much to do in the day - you can go for bike rides, but there's no where to ride them, and the bikes are old. But if you want you can sit in the Friends and Family Guy bars, where they play videos on loop.

9) Vang vieng is safe and everyone's up for a laugh. We've seen some funny costumes tubing - cowboy hats and face masks. Even Santa!

10) TUBING - is the best. You start off in a rubber ring at the top of the river and there are bars dotted along the side. They throw you a line to catch and then haul you into the bars. The music is great, you can jump in, swing in from a trapeze, you can even play Mud Volleyball or do mud wrestling in some bars. We had a friend who started off at the top of the river and skipped all the bars and floated all the way down. He thought why does everyone rave about this - the water's really calm! It's not the tubing itself it's the bars, the atmosphere.

I can't put my finger on it but maybe we were put under a spell... It was hard to leave.