Laos Day 2 - Vang Vieng

The cold, well not ever cold in this part of the world, hard light of day in the morning made us realise that another night in Vientiane and especially that hotel would be a mistake as we were underwhelmed by both so we got reception to book us a bus to Vang Vieng leaving at 10:30am. They looked slightly confused, but seemed to make the right phonecall and a tuk tuk arrived with 10 other sweaty travellers already aboard (at this point it’s worth mentioning that not all tuk tuk’s I am referring to are actually tuk tuk’s – some are Sorngtaaou’s which are either motorcycle or car powered at the front with a pick-up truck style rear end, lined on each side with benches facing each other, they are more common in Laos and Thailand it seems and can carry more passengers but feel even less safe! It’s just easier to write tuk tuk).

The view from our hotel in Vang Vieng

We were driven around the corner to a dusty street and dropped off to wait for the large coach to arrive. Word around the group was it’d be at least another hour, which was not great news as there was little shade and it was already above 30 degrees. There was a school leavers group from Australia waiting along with a whole other bunch of youngsters – Lisa and I were amongst the oldest there which made us feel like we were not going to enjoy Vang Vieng.

By the time the bus arrived we’d stuffed ourselves with fruit from the bike vendor making a killing and were suitably sticky and sweaty. We now have the routine for catching transport down to a fine art though – especially the bus. Lisa takes the small bags and elbows her way on at the front of the queue getting us a good seat whilst everyone else is making sure their backpacks are perfectly positioned under the bus (I don’t know why – because generally someone like me comes along behind them and shoves them to the back leaving mine at the front, handy for when we get off) – and I take care of snacks and the big backpacks. We got seats at the front with the most legroom and least potential for epic bumps on the crappy Laos roads.

Laos Mela!

The journey was uneventful apart from our rest stop, which sold Tim Tams that got the Aussie teenagers (who looked about 12 to us) rather excited. We arrived in Vang Vieng after about 4 or 5 hours, which was enough time to watch some TV on the laptop and not get too sick of it. We had a hotel already booked – and knew roughly where it was so we rejected all offers of a ride and set off. It was about a 15 minute walk right at the hottest part of the day – when we arrived I almost passed out. We were a bit dubious beforehand about the hotel so had only pre-booked one night, fortunately it turned out to be unwarranted as the place was like a palace! It looked really out of place in the street – all roman columns, huge balconies and a water feature out front.

We collapsed in our room with the air con set to 16 on turbo and didn’t move for about an hour.

Once it had cooled down a little outside we ventured out to see the town and also the sunset over the river. On the way we encountered a welcome reminder of Brisbane in the form of Laos Mela! Despite my best attempts at a snuggle though she wasn't having any of it. 

We had read and heard about Vang Vieng in great detail – it has become a backpacker party town over the last 5 or 6 years thanks largely to the activity known as ‘tubing’. Apparently it started as a local employers Friday afternoon treat for the locals – he gave them truck tyre inner tubes and some beers and they floated down the river to chill out. Soon tourists got wind of it and wanted to have a go to – then other locals saw an opportunity to rent out tubes, set up riverside bars along the way and make some money. Quickly it developed into a party mecca – with dozens of bars popping up, each offering free shots, weed, speed, opium, mushroom shakes and happy pizzas to tubers partying down the Nam Song all day.

Inevitably with that going on over the years accidents have happened – we were told by a local at least 8 people had died in Vang Vieng in the past 5 years, 4 had drowned or broken their necks in the river (there were many rope swings and jumping platforms along the way) with others overdosing on drugs. Now however, the government seems to be cracking down on things and has ripped down all of the riverfront shack bars – but you can still go tubing and you can still buy drugs in the town, it’s just a lot harder than before and apparently there are undercover police patrolling more frequently.

With that in our minds – we were dubious about staying too long here and the kid of crowds we’d encounter. We walked through the town relatively quickly as it isn’t all that big. We headed roughly towards the river and saw a nice looking bar/restaurant/hotel right on the banks – reached via a rickety looking swing bridge over a smaller river. We had some drinks and watched the sun go down over the mountains in the distance. I was surprised by just how beautiful the scenery was here – you can see why the government are keen to alter the perception of the town and change the demographic of people visiting. There are huge limestone karsts jutting out from lush green rolling hills, similar to Ha Long Bay but inland.

Sunset tubers

We saw a few tubers meandering their way to the exit point that was just near the restaurant next to another rickety bridge over the main river. They all had plastic bags filled with empty beer bottles – it seems the only way to go tubing now is BYO, which is probably not a bad thing as at least you can only drink as much as you can carry – provided it isn’t the local rhum or whiskey, because that stuff will make you go blind.

We strolled back up through the main strip of bars and restaurants and EVERYWHERE was dead and it was 6:30pm – it was a little eerie. There was a line of ladies selling burgers and kebabs on the route that tubers would have previously taken after finishing the run and no doubt they used to make a killing – it would probably be a bit tough for them now the town was dead.

We stopped and had some food at the liveliest place we could find – took a stroll around some of the shops on the way home and went about planning the next few days in Laos.