Vang Vieng

The bus dropped us off at a guest house in the center but there was zero pressure to stay there and we went to look for a place closer the the river. I stayed
at Vieng Vilai Guest House on a street called "B Sengsavang" I think.
It was a pretty good spot in the heart of the action and pretty
social. I had a private room with hot shower and satellite tv for
30,000kip!

Vang Vieng is a ridiculous place. The town is incredibly touristy but
it is set amongst beautiful scenery. The main attraction is "tubing"
on the river but the majority of people don't actually tube (I never
did) they just take a tuk tuk (10,000kip per person) to the river bars
a few kilometers outside of town around 1 in the afternoon. It's a lot
of fun and there are rope swings and slides and tons of free shots.
It's basically like spring break for backpackers. Around 7pm everyone
piles into tuk tuks (10,000kip per person) to go back to town where,
after a shower and some food, the party continues at either OhLaLa Bar
or Q-Bar (more free shots) and Q-bar plays a video of the day from
their river location.

Vang Vieng is still worth going to if your mission isn't just
partying. It's really easy to get away from all the tourist stuff in
just a couple minutes on a bike. I discovered a really nice little
area just over a car bridge on the other side of the river that had a
couple guest houses and still felt like real Laos. Also surrounding
town are a lot of big limestone Kearsts and there are a lot of caves
to explore.

Leaving Vang Vieng I decided to just go straight through to Bangkok
cause I had a flight to catch from Bangkok to Sri Lanka. In Vang Vieng
I arranged to go all the way which was long but pretty easy. I found a
travel agent where I could buy a VIP bus to Vientiane for 50,000kip
and I bought my train ticket from them (upper berth, aircon for
950baht) the 950 baht included transfer from Vientiane center to the
Laos international train, that ticket and the train ticket to Bangkok.
The actual cost of the two train tickets was just over 700bht so you
could probably do it cheaper yourself but it would be more hassle and
there's no way to buy train tickets ahead of time online so you either
have to go to the train station or buy through the agent.