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Published: October 30th 2007
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We made the overnight bus journey to the capital Vientiene and were pretty fresh when we arrived as we went on the sleeper bus with beds. We had read about the capital in our LP book and to be honest it didn't sound too interesting, very similar to other capital cities we have visited on our travels so far. We decided to get some breakfast and make a decision whether to stay or move on to Vang Vieng where there is more to do. We had a bit of a mooch around and although the place seemed nice we made the decision to get the bus to VV. So we hoped onto another bus and made the 7hr journey through the winding mountains and beautiful countryside.
Vang Vieng was smaller than we imagined and basically consists of a load of bar/restaurants most showing re-runs of friends, simpsons or family guy. The strangest thing of all is half the restaurant is tables and chairs, the other half is tables and beds so you can lie down whilst having a beer and watching TV, genius.
We managed to find a nice room on the river for $4 and settled in before
heading out for some food and indulging in the bizarre past-time of drinking beer whilst lying down watching friends. The next morning we were up early and headed down to the Tubing office to register and get the tuk tuk with other fellow tubers and travel the 3km up river to start our adventure. I should realy explain what tubing is for those of you who don't know. It involves sitting in a big innertube and basically flowing down the river with the current, stopping off occasionally at one of the many bars along the way for a beer and some rope swinging action (see videos!). We started off nice and slow and we bumped into the dutch girls we met on the bus and we all headed into the first bar, about 2 mins from the start! The first bar had a zip wire so after a beer we walked to the top of the ladder and zoomed down crashing into the water. Pretty tame compared with what was still to come. We headed back into our tubes and moved to the next bar again only a couple of minutes down the river and we got out for some
dare devil action, this time the rope swing. It wasn't too high but still good fun, we skipped the beer at this bar as we had our sensible heads on. The next bar was by far the busiest so we and the dutch girls laid down our tubes for a while and watched all the nutters go from the highest rope swing. After a beer i decided to join the nutters and it was well worth it, i even landed with my crown jewls intact unlike some of the other lads......ooouch (see video, click by our pic at top). Lisa wasn't up for it but Patrisha (dutch girl) had a go but once started decided she was too scared to let go, she swung a few times before letting go at the bottom never to be repeated. We grabbed some food and headed back into our tubes and decided it was gonna get dark soon and we had no idea how far we still had to go so we meandered to final 2km which was realy relaxing. We said fairwell to our tubing buddies and headed back for a shower before food and sadly more friends watching.
The second
day we/I was feeling energetic so we hired mountain bikes and headed off to see the surrounding caves and their blue lagoons. We cycled passed loads of locals headed into the town as it was the yearly boat racing festival that day which made it quite a dusty start to our journey with their big wagons passing us. It took us about 1 hr to reach our first cave and lagoon which to be honest was a little unimpressive. We made the effort to climb to the cave entrance but had no intention of going is as we didn't have a torch so clambered back down before i decided to have a swim in the lagoon, v cold but refreshing. We headed to another cave and lagoon which again didn't meet our expectations so we headed back to town, dusty and tired, and went down to watch the final of the boat racing. Lisa claimed her muscles were aching so she headed off to get a massage $3 whilst i headed for a well earned beer whilst nearly falling asleep watching yet another episode of friends. After this we decided it was time to move on before we become some
kind of moronic zombies and head north to the beautiful city of Luang Probang where an elephant ride and a swim in a waterfall awaits.
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David Deane
non-member comment
Tubing
How great is the tubing? Comfortably the best activity we did in our 8 months away. Beer, water, rope swings, sunshine and an innertube. That's what life should be about.