Day 18: Vang Vieng (Rest Day & Visa Run) Distance travelled so far 860km "The Visa Run"
The Night Before.....
Our night in Van Vieng was fine. Our hostel was pretty class, comfortable and for a great price too. For dinner...we decided that we deserved a good greasy meal after our hard day's mountain climbing.... So thats what we did. Of course this meal was served with a couple of beerlaos (we earned them!!)....Van Vieng is really, really weird. It is literally a mini Khao San Road in the middle of nowhere...The towns that preceed it are bity little villages where trying to find accomodation and a variety of food is extremely difficult. We had wondered what "all the talk" was about when we spoke with backbackers hundreds of kilometers away from Vang Vieng and to be honest as we cycled to it, we really could not have invisiged the size of it and how commercialised it turned out to be....
Van Vieng is essentially a tourist trap where all the shops, restaurants etc are there with one purpose....to fleece you whilst you are there. Almost every bar, cafe and restaurant have either the TV programmes "Friends" or "Family Guy" to view on their 3-4 tv screens...Its nearly hard to find a place that doesnt have tv's on...In fact, there was one Cafe on the strip that had a "No Friends" sign outside. After being so used of such a basic/simple lifestyle, this place has come as a bit of a shock to us....
After walking the streets in amoungst the trekers, backpackers we came across a very simple barbershop......It was a pity Mike got his hair chopped a while back...
The Visa Run....
We applied for our Indian visa on Tuesday....It was now Friday morning and we got great news from Misi at the Indian Embassy back in Vientiane, that we had all been granted our 6 mth (double entry) visa. We were delighted because when we applied, there was a strong possibility that the process may have taken until the following Monday and which would then have placed us approx 400km from Vientiane (a 16hr round trip to pick them up)......With this great visa news...we decided to go back to Vientiane on a shuttle bus to collect them all the while looking at the ridiculous terrain we had cycled the day before....Spirits were pretty high amoungst us all as you can clearly see....
With our Indian Visa collected, we head back to Vang Vieng taking things easy. We catch up with some email, skype and website stuff. We are all very pleased with the website. All the kind comments are brilliant to see. We once again would like to thank all the people who have donated to our Charity thus far. It is very pleasing to see such a positive response to the Charity Cycle....
We once again would like to re-iterate that we are fully self funded for this cycle and with 100% of all funds raised going directly to The Share a Dream Foundation. Please remember that all donations (no matter how big or small) give us and our Charity a great boost so please spread the good word...
Thanks once again everyone,
Paul, Brian, Mike
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