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Published: February 11th 2009
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View from our Guesthouse.Our overnight bus to Vang Vieng was only 6.5 hours but it was the worst transportation I've experienced yet. Besides the fact that this bus had extremely uncomfortable seats that didn't really recline, there was a 50 year old Chinese guy in the back hocking up loogies as loud as he possible could and spitting them on the floor. At one point I counted 9 people who turned to look at him and he seemed to be completely oblivious to the fact that he was repulsive. Because we were on some windy roads, I heard this little Asian man crouched down next to my seat dry heaving....I looked at him and yelled NO, so he moved back further to puke on the floor. I had to hold my bag the rest of the way because I couldn't see if his puke was making it's way in my direction or not. The other thing that I thought was quite strange is that they over sell all means of transportation here on a regular basis. In this particular situation they oversold the bus by 4 seats so they brought out 4 stools and had people sitting in the aisle way for 6.5 hours.
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River coming from within the mountain. They were all locals so I wasn't able to ask if they received a discount or not, but I'm guessing not. About 3 hours into the ride we pulled over randomly to the side of the road and everyone started clearing off the bus so we followed. As I stepped off the bus I realized that we had stopped for a pee break. Everyone was relieving themselves anywhere that seemed convenient, so I naturally joined in. The best part of the trip was when we pulled up to a deserted 3 way intersection at 4am and they told us this was our stop and to walk 5 minutes in the direction they pointed us. We had no choice so we went with it.
We arrived at Vang Vieng Guesthouse where we were staying for the next few nights but there was a blue tarp all the way across the front. We found a way behind the tarp where there were about 20 padded seats made for lounging and watching TV. The guesthouse was shutdown because it was so late so we figured it was a great place to shack up for the rest of the night. We awoke to
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and again... some guy poking us telling us he had a room available, so we took it. It was 100,000 kip per night, roughly $12. We got all settled in and set out to explore the town, about 20 minutes later we had seen the whole place so we grabbed some food. All the food here is very good and because Laos used to be a French territory it naturally has a strong French influence in all of it's menu options. Everything you order here comes with a baguette, it's really rather strange. The other crazy thing about Vang Vieng is that every place you go has either Friends or Family Guy playing, so when you eat any meal you are guaranteed to be watching one of the two programs. I personally enjoy both programs but for the life of me cannot figure out what the obsession is with these shows. The town is so small that no matter where you are you can always here the Friends theme song and I can honestly say that I never want to hear it again!
That night we booked a full day trek that included trekking through a few caves, tubing, swimming and
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The entrance to the river under the mountain. kayaking. The next morning we woke early, ate breakfast and hopped in the back of a truck to head out for our day trek. On the way to the caves we nearly avoided running into a bull that found a convenient place to lay in the middle of the street, how can you not find that amusing? The first few caves were really cool, we walked back about 150 yards into them. One went deeper but it was way too slippery to continue so the guide walked us back out. Next we headed over to a little fresh water river that didn't look too interesting at first but we jumped on tubes and made our way under a little rock opening above the water into this river that ran under the mountain. There was a rope line that ran back into the cave that we followed until we came to a little rock beach. We hopped off the tubes and walked back further until we found water pouring through the top of the cave and the river went on into the dark as far as our headlamps would shine. This is definitely one of the cooler things I've done in
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Our BBQ lunch...kabobs on stir fried rice served in a banana leaf. my life. Once we left the cave we ate lunch. They had BBQ'd some kabobs over a some coals then put them on a bed of vegetable fried rice, wrapped up in a banana leaf. It was really good and a cool way to eat lunch. After lunch we headed back to the truck to drive over to the kayaking location. Let me just say right now that there was no trekking included in the trek that we booked. At one point the guide literally said, "okay, now we trek back to the truck." I think they have the complete wrong understanding of what a trek is. Anyway, we got to our kayaks via the truck and hopped in the river. The kayaking was pretty uneventful but we did see what all the hype was about as far as the tubing was concerned. But I'll get into that in the next section. As we ended the kayaking there were little kids bathing in the river while other little kids were brushing there teeth downstream of the kids bathing. I've given up on trying to figure out the logic in these countries, so I just laugh. That night we had a
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View of an abandoned rice field and a mountain in the distance. few drinks and passed out after dinner because we had a long crazy day of tubing the following day.
The funny thing about Vang Vieng is that it's not uncommon to see some guy limping around wasted, completely aimlessly at 1am with one sock on, stitches in his head and magic marker all over his body. The first few days I couldn't figure out why everyone in the city was injured until I went tubing. The other thing I discovered about tubing is that it involves very little tubing.
We got our tubes at around 11 and got driven up to the first bar. I watched about 35 people go off the 4 story rope swing before I decided I needed to do it. As soon I had climbed the tree to the top and stepped on the platform the little kid pulling the rope up took off down the tree without a word. So, I'm standing at the top of this rope swing waiting for him to come back and pull it in for me. About 5 minutes went by and this kid who I had seen swing about 6 times got to the top. He pulled the
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again... swing in for me and was like, "go ahead." There didn't seem to be anything wrong with it so I swung down, but during the swing the elastic band they used to pull the rope in snapped and whipped me in the side. It didn't hurt that much, I was just worried it was wrapped around me somewhere. Once I realized it wasn't I let go and it happened to be one of the majority of shallow places in the river and I definitely touch rock bed. I didn't hit hard enough for it to hurt so I was thankful for that. I climbed the ladder back to the deck and decided it was time to move on to the next bar. We tossed the tubes in and made our way to the next bar which was like a 2 minute float down the river. The only way I can explain this river is like something out of spring break. There are wasted kids everywhere jumping out of trees into the river, zip lining, rope swinging, coming of water slides and tubing. People are nearly landing on tubers coming off the lines into the shallow river. There is loud music
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Man bathing in the river. pumping out of the speakers, people dancing and it's absolute madness! We partied all day and headed further and further down the river until we reached a place with a huge mud pit. I walked over there and got t-boned into it by some drunken English girl. People were wrestling and jumping into this pit...it was one of the funnest things I've ever done. It was near impossible to get out because the edges were so slippery. Once I finally got out I hosed myself off and hopped back in the river. Towards the end of the day people started stealing all the tubes so we would have to high tale it to the next bar and claim a tube. In the end it started get a little chilly and we decided that we didn't really want to sit in the tube for an hour and be cold so we let our tubes float down the river and we caught a cab home. The deposit on the tubes was not worth me being cold, lol. As far as tubing is concerned that was probably the weakest tubing story ever because I think I sat on it for about 10 minutes
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Bamboo bridge over the river. in 6 hours. On the other hand, it was the best time I've ever had tubing! After tubing I guess I decided it was a good idea to continue drinking so I went out to the bars and carried on through the night.
The next morning I was a bit drained but we had booked tickets to the Capitol of Laos, Vientiane so I was excited to move on. I felt a little guilty about not staying longer but it made me feel better that it rained through the night so people weren't going tubing anyway. If we had stayed we would've been watching friends all day long! On a side note, I've been cleaning mud out of my ears for the past 3 days. Off to Vientiane!!!
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Jess
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Your Tubing Experience
These entries are awesome! I am loving the tubing story. Hysterical. That place is like nothing I have ever heard of. Keep up the writing Cam! You will love having these journals once this trip is over. xo