Tuesday...The Long and Winding road

Tuesday morning meant a fond farewell to our lovely Thong Bay Guesthouse and the beautiful bungalow we had called home for 4 days!  After a lovely send off from the staff, who all came out to wave us goodbye as we headed off in our 'Jumbo' (a motorized tuk tuk) and drove the short distance to the southern bus terminal.

It was then that we felt very pleased that we had invested a little extra money to get the VIP bus to Vang Vieng, as we saw the 'local bus'!!  After a short wait at the bus station we headed off south, and for about 1 hour did a steady climb higher into the mountains.  The views were truly stunning, with every switch back taking us past another small remote village.

We stopped for lunch at a hill top restaurant and had noodle soup - compliments of our bus ticket, that's what you get for traveling VIP!!  With bellies full we set off once again southwards, and came across our first near miss...as the roads are very narrow and wind around on the edge of the mountains in a steady stream of tight switch backs it seemed inevitable before we 'nearly' hit an oncoming truck/bus.  Never in a million years would we imagine that we would be left hanging off the side of the road though!!  A quick escape from the bus allowed to view in full how close we were to going over the side...to the bus driver and locals however, this seemed like a common occurrence.

Once they had maneuvered the bus out of it's sticky situation we hopped back on, all a bit shaken and headed down into the valley amongst the limestone karsts towards Vang Vieng.  We arrived at 3pm (miraculously only 1 hour later than scheduled) and caught a jumbo to our hotel.  First impressions are that it is a small town in a stunningly beautiful location...surrounded by towering limestone karsts and green fields.

We are staying at the Vansana hotel, our biggest splurge to date, at a whopping 15gbp per person per night...it is rated as the top range option in town and has a pool!!  So, we know where we will be tomorrow.