Greetings from Vang Vieng!!  Sorry about the last entry being posted a million times I got a little click happy it seems. So since we last put anything up we have been zipping round the jungle, Helen has turned 22 and we have started to consume vast amounts of Lao Lao (the local drop).  Luang Prabang:  Arrived in the busiest week of the year without a reservation!!  Laos new year had just got underway and so Luang Prabang was flooded with people ?obviously the place to be.  We were pretty happy about arriving at this time until we tried to find a room.  Luckily our stupidity fell on Helens birthday and after a phone call to the rents we were put up in a rather nice hotel.  Straggling in, in our dirty clothes, with our backpacks on we felt a little out of place.  We were determined to use the hotel well.  Dumping all our clothes into the bathtub and washing them twice (the water went black both times) and stringing them up around the air con room using electrical wiring.  After all this excitement ?believe me the clean clothes thing is exciting? we naturally headed to the bar.  Cooked our own dinner bbq style and then hit the cocktails ?hard.  After 2 BUCKETS of lao lao cocktails we were more than sociable and soon got talking to a bunch of other travellers.  The drunken hunger soon kicked in and so we discovered the wonder that is the chicken egg baguette.  Other than the drinking we did check out the main stupa there at the top of a bloody hill!!!  Got a boat across to the sandbanks to see sand stupas being built.  Got drenched on the streets as everyone throws water at you and then covered in flour (and motor oil if your unlucky!).  We resisted the temptation to buy more pretty things at the night market ?it was close many times.  Got up early to see the monks receiving their alms.  Helen checked out the hospital facilities just for fun ?well and to get her burn cleaned out and Claire headed to the big waterfall nearby with a couple of other travellers.  The rope swing has ended her arms and the beer was drunk rather too quickly!   The Gibbon Experience and Huay Xai:  Getting up to the gibbon experience was a less than pleasant experience.  Figuring the warnings of the fatalities on speed boats are exaggerated we hopped straight on.  The 6 hour boat journey eating your knees in the baking sun, sitting on a cm thick piece of foam left us less than joyful.  The sunburn still lives on!  Rocking up at the nearest guest house we book in and do what we do best.  Lock ourselves in our room and go crazy.  Stripped down to underwear with wet towels on our burn we ate cookies and prepared for Gibbon the next day.Gibbon experience ? what can we say?  Best time ever!!!  Zipping over rainforest 150m up in the air, through mist in the mornings and sunsets in the evenings.  Of course there was going to be some drama ?it is us after all.  The first night 75m up in our tree house ?a storm picks up.  Claire starts taking photos of the lightening cracking around us and is completely oblivious when one of ther guides zips in and starts shouting for us to evacuate.  Throwing our harnesses on we clipped onto the zip wire and had the exhilarating experience of zipping at night having no idea where you are going or when to stop.  Very exciting.  Don?t want to go on about it but would recommend it to anyone.  Probably the best thing ever! After Gibbon we hired a mini-bus with some of the team we were with on the experience and headed back to Luang Prabang.  After a day there we caught a mini bus down to vang vieng where we are writing from now.  Here is the backpacker central of Laos with bars with beds showing friends and family guy on constant loop, tubing down the river with beers and cocktails, kayaking and caving.  Tonight is a full moon party which should be a lot of fun.  Hopefully we wont be too hung over tomorrow.   Signing off for another couple of weeks Claire and Helen xx