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Published: September 15th 2006
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When I left Vang Vieng I couldn't believe that I had stayed there 8 nights... I found a really wonderful guesthouse and just forgot all about time! Vang Vieng is a really beautiful area in Laos along the Nam Song river that has all kinds of adventure activities for tourists, but unfortunately it has also become such a tourist mecca that the town itself is not that interesting. Sadly it is full of tv bars showing the Simpsons and Friends - I just can't understand why so many people come away travelling only to spend their days watching crappy tv they would never watch back home... So after a couple of nights of staying near the centre of town I moved to a really quiet guesthouse across the river and away from all the action.
The guesthouse was called May Lyn and it seriously is just as the Lonely Planet describes it as being set in a beautiful garden full of butterflies. The owner is an old Irish guy with a big personality and I was lucky enough to be there for his 60th birthday - he threw a big party with free food and alcohol so it was a
really wonderful night!
It was funny to see a lot of people I met in Vientiane show up at this same guesthouse a couple of days later. So I had a great time hanging out will a really nice bunch of people. While I was there I went kayaking, caving, tubing and cycling - but I really didn't end up doing that much!
The kayaking trip was a real highlight, as despite what I said about the Halong bay tour, I did sign up for another tour - as that is pretty much the only way you can go kayaking if you're not experienced - and I was so suprised to find on this tour that there were 5 other females who were all travelling on their own! Its not that often that you meet other girls travelling on their own and we all got along so well so it was a really wonderful day! Kayaking down the river we saw some beautiful scenery (I don't have any pictures as I didn't want to risk my camera getting wet or stolen), but kayaking was a really great way to appreciate it. We stopped off at a cave next
to a stream where I had my introduction to tubing - to explore this cave we sat in tractor tyre tubes that allowed us to float into the cave - it really was a lot of fun!
There are a lot of caves in the area and another day I visited Poukham cave and spent about 2 hours inside - the people I were with seemed determined to go back as far as possible into the cave. I was with a group of 5 and unfortunately we only had 2 lights between us - which made things a bit slow. We didn't quite reach the end - apparently it goes back about 2 kilometres - but what we saw was really spectacular - and a bit creepy too - getting out of the cave was a little harder than we expected as we lost the path at one point and started climbing over huge boulders - but then realised despite heading towards the light we were heading the wrong way!
Tubing is what most people come to Vang Vieng for - to float down the river for 4km inside a tractor tyre tube, stopping off at bars along
the way. The bars along the river are a lot of fun as a lot of them have built all kinds of amusements such as flying foxes and rope swings - I really enjoyed the flying fox at one of the first bars. You had to climb up a ladder about 8 metres high and then grap hold of the swing - but it was way easier than jumping directly into the water, as once you grap hold of the swing the force of it is so strong that is basically pulls you off the platform... and then you swing through the air about 20 or 30m up and back and basically hold on as long as you can before you fall into the water! It was a lot of fun, but I also saw some very drunk people do some awful bellyflops and really hurt themselves - but which was also really funny to see!
It's just amazing how set up for tourists the whole area around Vang Vieng is - and also the number of people who come to Laos just to go to Vang Vieng. While Vang Vieng is a really beautiful area, there are lots
of spectacular areas in Laos and its strange how what was originally just a small village of the river has been transformed into another Khao San Road area. When I went cycling I saw some towns nearby to Vang Vieng that were still really rural - just bamboo huts and dirt roads - the contrast to Vang Vieng was huge.
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joe foley
non-member comment
get it right
Its actually spelt Maylyn not May Lyn or Maylin or Maylan lots of love joe