Freaky town

---

May 30

Vang Vieng must be owned by Beerlao. Everywhere you look there are Beerlao umbrellas, tablecloths and illuminated guesthouse signs all nicely printed with a beer bottle on them. Consuming alcohol seems to be big business here, at least it's a major attraction for idiotic 18-year-olds whose idea of travelling is 'getting wasted' and then lying around in a bar watching Friends on TV and possibly ordering something off the 'happy menu'.

Vang Vieng is described as a town that has 'lost its soul'. I think it's been marinated or possibly pickled. But it does have dramatically beautiful scenery: a drowsy river, karsts, caves and jewel-bright jungle.

Then there are the freaks. No, I shouldn't call them that, they're just people who have downed too much of something or other and lost control.

For example:
1. The girl in a bikini staggering in the road with no shoes and no apparent idea what she was doing at 5pm.

2. A young man, possibly with a burst eardrum, lurching around slurring 'English? English?' and then asking where the hospital was.

Then there was the guy walking with his head tilted to one side carefully aiming for a bar, and the random injured: the bandaged, eye patched, limping, etc.

The kids get drunk - or eat magic mushrooms - then go tubing, swimming, leaping off things into the river. Of course there are accidents.

Vang Vieng is eerily quiet in the morning, and even into the afternoon. Then we discovered where the idiots go during the day.

There is a lovely organic farm a few km out of Vang Vieng. I and a few others went there to sample mulberry tea and look at the accommodation possibilities in its tranquil grounds. As we walked towards the entrance, all we could hear was boom, boom, boom.

Trying to locate the source of the noise we walked towards the river. There is a scene in the film Apocalypse Now when the main character goes upriver on a boat, rounds a curve and is confronted with a garish nightclub in the jungle with blaring music, pulsing lights, Playboy bunnies arriving in helicopters, etc, etc.

I glanced upriver and saw the modern Lao equivalent: two huge multistorey wooden bars crammed with drunken gap year party animals screaming, guzzling and leaping into the water off platforms and from ropes. Two sound systems duelled for supremacy with struggling speakers.

I don't mind music in a bar, but it's just wrong on a rural river next to an organic farm. Organic produce should be happy, calm produce, not produce tortured by distortion. My mulberry shake was excellent, but the idea of staying there was a non-starter. It was quieter in town next door to a normal bar, which was a lot more peaceful than this. The organic farm management urges people to write and complain about the noise pollution to the Lao tourism authorities.

Apparently just 3 or 4 years ago, Vang Vieng was still a beautiful and serene place to visit. Oh well. Next day we hired bicycles and went looking for caves. A sign pointed us in the direction of one 400m away, and after abandoning the bikes, fording a stream and striking off over a rice paddy, we found it about 2km later. It was a dark narrow hole that didn't appeal to me at all, but I quite enjoyed getting there. We got slightly lost on the way back to the amusement of a Lao woman tending her lunch, but that was a good walk with an opportunity to cool the feet.

That afternoon I had an ice coffee from the corner cafe with the coffee machine. I've stopped drinking caffeinated beverages, but I'd sampled one of these babies and it was gooood. I knew I had to have my own creamy passport to super-alertness, and at 8,000 kip it remains the best purchase I've made yet in this country.

Afterwards some manic cycling was required to calm me down again - no hardship as the sun set over the karsts.

I wasn't sure I'd sleep that night, but all I can think about is where the next cold, caffeine-laden concoction might come from ...

---