Vang Vieng, Laos
20/12/2008 - 22/12/2008 : Took the early bus from Vientiane to go to Vang Vieng. Bus ride is about 3 hours. We were supposed to get an air-conditioned bus, but I think what they meant by it, is natural air-conditioning, by opening up the windows. Anyways, ride to Vang Vieng was good. I sat down next to some German Geneticicist working in Australia and we shared travel stories and in less than no time, we were already in Vang Vieng.
Reached Vang Vieng around noon and I met an Israeli guy - Benni, who was in the same bus as me who wanted to go and look for guesthouses together. We took a shared tuk tuk for 5000 Kips/person to drop us in the center of town even though it was walking distance. We checked out about 4 guesthouses and they were so very cheap - in the $4 - $7 range per room with own private bathroom and air-con/fan. Benni picked one and I picked another one. I picked the NguenPhanith Guesthouse and paid 40,000 kips per night for it (about $5 USD). I had a nice clean double bed room with fan, private hot shower bathroom and commode. The guesthouse had a restaurant downstairs with bed style lounges, where one could lounge, eat and watch 'friends' all day long. Yes, 'friends'. A lot of restaurants/lounges in Vang Vieng play non-stop 'Friends' episodes over episodes on TV all day long. The settings of these restaurants are lounge like.. no chairs.. just cushions with low tables.. such that one could basically lie down full length at each table. Its exactly how the lonely planet guidebook mentionned it - 'VanVieng is just lazy bums watching infinite re-runs of friends drinking 'happy' shakes'.. yes Happy Shakes. So I came down to have lunch and immediately someone came and asked me if I wanted 'special' shakes or 'special' pizza. What it is is just shakes or pizzas, with magic halucinogen mushrooms or marijuana. Had some Lao lunch (non-magic), Watched a couple of episodes of friends and then met up Benni for some sightseeing. We rented bicyles. These were expensive in Vang Vieng - 20,000 kips vs 10,000 in Vientiane and also had to return them by 7:00p.m, whereas in Vientianne, it was for 24 hours. We biked around the little town that was Vang Vieng. Checked out a few sites and went by the river to watch sunset and watch the returning 'Tubers'.. Vang Vieng is famous for river tubing. They have quite a few riverside bars with bamboo platforms and cushions, where one can lie down, watch the river, have some drinks and enjoy the day. I was looking at their menu and they had magic drinks for about 60,000 kips. Lao Beer is 10,000. While having some drinks, met up with a local Lao guy who was also vacationing there. He told us of some the cool things to do and things to check at night. Went back to the guesthouse for dinner and later at night came by the riverside. All the bars by the riverside had a bonfire, loud music, cheap drinks and people dancing, partying around the fire. It was nice, but they all close at midnight. Booked a whole day tour for the next day to do some caving for for the first half of the day and then tubing for the next half. Tuk Tuk came to pick me up and we went off to the Caving place. Our tour group was a varied nice group of people, a couple from Australia, an english dude, a thai lady, a french guy and his philipina wife and two tour guides. The first cave we checked was the Elephant cave where there were some naturally formed elephant structures. After that, we walked through a Lao traditional village to go to our next cave. The village was interesting. Lots of free roaming animals - pigs, chickens, cows, calfs, dogs, ducks and roosters. Lots of kids also playing around and people busying themselves at day to day activities such as weaving, farming, napping. We passed through this village to go the next Cave, where we would be tubing it out. We each got a rubber tube (from the inside of truck wheels) and we sat down in it and were to follow the guide into the water cave, each of us armed with a head lamp. There was a guide rope we can use to pull ourselves in the cave and follow the group. For as long as there was the rope, we pulled ourselves in the low caves and admired the various stalactite and stalagmite formations, the different cave insects and other darkness goodies.As we paddles through the caves, it was funny how the water temperature changed from very cold to warm and back and forth. We had a good 30-45 minutes cave visit and then finally got out. Lunch was provided as part of the trip. The guides grilled some chicken and pineapple kebabs for us and we ate that with fried rice and bananas. After lunch and chill out in the sun to dry out, we proceeded to our next event - Tubing in the Nam Song River.. Basically what the tubing consists of, is just sitting down in an inner tube and just let it go downstream by paddling with the hands or just letting the current take you down. Along the entire river, there are many bars. So the whole tubing thing is just a big drunk and chilling out festival. From our starting point, its about 4 km downstream. We had the guide come with us in a Kayak in case we needed some help etc.. + he kept our drybags for us. We started the tubing and stopped a few of the bars along the way. Each of the bars have got huge trapeze like structures where one could do some trapeze before jumping into the river. Another bar had a giant water slide, where you'd slide down and land in the middle of the river. I did not do any of these after my water incident the day before. After about half way tubing (2 or so hours), I got bored and was wishing it would end.. as there was not much current and we had to paddle with our hands.. we did not need to paddle as well.. if we just wanted to chill in the sun and letting the river take us wherever. At some points along the river route, there were rocks and the river was shallow, where the rocks would give the bottoms a very good massage. We finally reached the ending point for the tubing and we disembarked. Before going back to the hotel, I stopped along the way in a travel agency and bought a bus ticket to go to Luang Prabhan the next morning for 105,000 kips and also bought a plane ticket to go from Luang Prabhan to Hanoi on Lao Airlines for $115, after spending 3 days in Luang Prabhan. After that, after a good hot shower, had a nice Lao dinner that night and watched maybe some 4 episodes of Friends before going to to the riverside bars to have a chill time. Tomorrow morning, got to catch the early bus to Luang Prabhan. I had a marvelous time in Vang Vieng and good experiences. The one difference here though is the crowd - most of the people were in the 18 - 23 year old age range. It seemed more a like a college spring break town than anything else. Felt kind of OLD but had lots of fun though !! Pic 1 : Tubing down the Nam Song RiverPic 2 : Many Riverside bars have bamboo louges by the river
Pic 3 : Naturally Formed Elephant Structure in the Elephant Cave
Pic 4 : Me and the group getting reading to tube into the Cave
Pic 5 : Lao Village Home
Pic 6 : Free Roaming Pig enjoying the cool mud
Pic 7 : Streets of Vang Vieng in the morning
Pic 8 : One of the many restaurants/lounge bars having friends re-run
Pic 9 : Smile Bar at night (one of the few riverside bars)
Pic 10 : My $5 room
Pic 11 : Adorable Lao Kids Greeting us as we walk through the village
