Blogs from Vang Vieng, West, Laos, Asia - page 19

I traveled from Luang Prabang to Vang Vieng by minibus, arriving the afternoon of the 15th. The minibus was the best ride I have thus far - there were only 13 of us on a 25 seat bus and the driver did not stop to pick-up further passengers. I had a double seat to myself! Vang Vieng has a reputation. Young travelers come to Vang Vieng to enjoy tubing down the Nam Xong (river), stopping at one of the 12 bars along the banks on the route. The shots are free, the drinks cheap and pot available for the asking (even though using drugs is illegal in Loas). They have installed rope swings, slides and dive spots along the river for the drunken 20 somethings to enjoy. Its like a mardi gras festival every day, tubers ... read more

Vang Vieng is a winding three hour drive from Laos' capital city, beautiful karste scenary makes it a popular destination for travellers, but locals have attempted to give Thailand's full moon parties a run for their money and have to the disgust of local farmers and all of those not engaged in the tourist industry turned the town into the world's wettest pub crawl. Some ingenious soul thought it would be a good idea to provide tourists with the inner tube from a truck tire. Once armed with your tube you are driven up river where you are met with bottles of locally brewed scorpian whisky or if that's not to your liking you can try wasp whisky. It is then up to you to float between the bars which are spaced at very regular intervals. ... read more

We were up and ready this morning by 5:45am as we were getting picked up to go and feed the monks. The local people get up at about 4:00am every morning to prepare food to give to the 400 odd monks of Luang Prabang. The reason for doing this is that is part of the ‘rules’ of being a monk that you aren’t allowed to purchase or prepare your own food, you can only eat what is given to you. Any food that you do receive must be consumed by midday as they are only allowed two meals a day, the rest of the day they can only have water, tea, coffee etc. The locals had prepared baskets of sticky rich for Contiki to hand out to the monks. We had to do grabs about the ... read more

I left Luang Pra Bang wondering why I was even there in the first place. Although if you're reading this and thinking about going, to be fair I have not heard one bad thing about the place and everyone is surprised that I didn't like it. I arrived in Vang Vieng and asked the hotel if they had wifi. They said yes so I took a room, it turns out they had the password to the neighbors restaurant's wifi and you had to sit on the second floor balcony with a strong breeze in order for for you to get a signal. They kept saying that tomorrow someone was coming to install their wifi. I was there five days and tomorrow never came. I shouldn't have expected anything different. The first night I met some people ... read more

Sadly, it was time to leave Luang Prabang and head over the mountains to Vang Vieng.  The town is primarily a backpackers haunt, where we'd been told that the must do activity was tubing but, viewing some photos it looked quite tame.  Scott and I, being used to white water kayaking and rafting in Australia and New Zealand were thinking we might give this a miss.  Luckily Steph, who is a fountain of knowledge on all things Loatian, filled me in via email. But more on that later...   We said goodbye to our fabulous local guide, Tui, at Luang Prabang.  He was off home to see his wife, who had delivered their second child while we were cruising down the Mekong.  We also picked up our new guide - the "crazy karaoke" guide, funnily enough ... read more