Nong Khiaw & Vang Vieng - Polar Opposites

---

Nong Khiaw

Spent 3 hours sitting in the back of a truck to get here. Beautiful place, stunning! Surrounded by hills, mountains, rice paddies, the rivers and villages.

Did traditional river fishing here with out man from the guesthouse. This pretty much involved trekking down the river (in the water of course) with a basket for the little fish, some huge sticks and a fishing net. We'd set the net up at meanders in the river where it's deeper and then slap the sticks on the water, making the fish panic and swim into the net to get caught. During this, his son and two nephews joined in and carried mini crossbows and proved themselves to be disturbingly good at getting the fish that way!

On returning from this trip, we had the fish fried up and scoffed the lot (admittedly I only had one and we fed a large amount to the residential puppy, but none the less...). Our guesthouse man also provided us with a fairly lethal bottle of LaoLao (rice spirit, about 45-50%!)(MISSING) which he forced upon us pretty much. Fair to say after that bottle and several Beerlao, it was time for bed.

Following day, myself, Alex and a new girl Alison headed off to the caves where locals hid during the American bombings. We found ourselves a little guide as well, who showed us caves that we would never have found ourselves. Note to self: bring a torch, caves in Laos are pitch black. About 500 people lived in these during the course of several years, seemed a pretty tiny space although oddly they dedicated a lot of room to banking and accounting, who knows?!


Vang Vieng

We took a fairly monsterous days journey back to Louang Prabang and then a bus straight away back south to Vang Vieng, home of the infamous and 'passage of right for all Indochinese backpackers'. This is pretty much getting a tuk-tuk a few km from the town up the river where you hop in a tractor inner-tube and float back down the river.

I should probably add that there are loads of bars and insane rope swings/zip lines like this

and a truly truly unbelievably mental slide like this

Fun yeah??!

Couple of things though unfortunately. First of all, I've been ill for a while and have generally tried to ignore it. Currently writing from Kual Lumpur where I'm hoping to find a doctor in the next day or two. This meant I was feeling to crap to drink and definitely too ill to do any of the insane stuff! Maybe next time! The other problem is that this is another destination bastardized by the endless stream of moronic Westerners with no regards for where they are. Thanks to it's location close to Thailand, it's where loads of people border hop for a while to get themselves a new Thai visa. That may sound like a fairly hefty gripe, but for the most part they are morons who spend all day in the bars watching Friends, Family Guy or The Simpsons (the place has gone so wrong that this seems to be the thing) and all evening getting trashed beyond belief and walking around wearing barely anything in a Buddist country. Stay in Thailand!!!

Anyways, good time there generally, even though the tubing for myself was pretty much entirely sitting in my tube floating and wishing I could be doing the fantastically retarded things on show. The place is stunning like most of Laos, surrounded by mountains and greenery.

Back to Vientiane after and after being ill for too long I joined Alex, Emma and Rick in going to the airport in hope of getting a ticket to Kuala Lumpur with them. That was this morning, mission complete and now I am in this new staggering city. First impressions are all brilliant, but more on that another day....

*I will add that I have used some of these pictures from wikipedia.org and one from someones website that has the site address in the picture. Look at those sites and hopefully I won't get in trouble. Couldn't take many pictures myself because of all the water and my shockingly bad camera! Thank you to these sources, you have good pictures!


UPDATE: 03/05/09

First of all, ha ha ha to all of you who stayed up to watch the boxing. Was on 11:30am here so not too painful!

Secondly, I went to the doctor and have a wonderful sounding bowel infection and have five wonderfully coloured pills to take a day.

Thirdly, it was only 3 quid to see the doctor AND get the drugs.

Fourthly, it took about half an hour total, compared to 3-5 hours in the UK.

Finally, thanks to those who commented on the last blog entry, new record set!

---

Photos

Respectable Catch
Kindly cooked by the man who owned the bungalows - they did unfortunately tasted like fishy mud.

Phatok Cave
Where the locals lived and kept the community running for almost 6 years during America's insane bombing on the country.

Ladder to the Caves
Fortunately there is another way now!

Finance Office
The caves were divided up into many sections in order to keep the province running, even under such hard conditions. It's impossible to fathom.

Evidence of Insanity
Some of the various shells found ONLY within the bungalow grounds. This is an insane amount.

Vang Vieng
Look safe?

Cheap & Nasty!
Much like the 'backpacker' scene here.

Sunset in Vang Vieng
Some proof that in and amongst all the filth that goes on, this is still one amazingly beautiful place.