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Published: July 14th 2006
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Hello everybody hope all is well at home.
We're in Vang Vieng which is on the way north between Vientienne and Luang Prabang! I like this place a lot - the locals call it Ban Farang, which losely translated means the town full of cheap, drunk, stoned, smelly westerners!
The only reason its here at all is because it used to take two days to travel between Luang Prabang and Vientienne so travellers would stop here and never leave! We thought we would go native and dodge the VIP bus for the cheaper local bus from Vientienne. That was an experience in itself, they pack you into a thirty year old bus with backpacks, rice and loads of other stuff in the aisle - there are picnic seats beside the driver for when the other seats fill up. There was a lady breast feeding beside me and then chucking her guts up! Dulce was going to offer her some tiger balm but in the state she was in it would have made her worse! About half way there and sitting in 37 degree heat they stopped the bus for about half an hour and jacked it up and
fixed something underneath - with everyone on board!!
Vang Vieng town is nothing special - you cross a working air strip to get to the mainstreet which is basically full of guesthouses, hash houses and cafes with Friends DVD's playing all day everyday and loads of westerners just hung over or monged staring at them! We got in late so just went out for some more beer Lao and then changed to a newer place called Babylon the next day - its run by an english guy and he's got a massive seating area with beds, a big TV and 400 dodgy DVDs to watch!
The main reason everyone comes here now is the outdoors stuff -oh yeah and because of the 'special menus' in the cafes. The scenery is unreal - there are massive limestone karsts (mountains) with the top covered by clouds all around the village that make it look like something from Jurassic park. On the second day we hired a few tractor inner tubes and caught a tuk tuk about 5 KM up stream of the Nam Song river that runs along side the village. Basically you just find a spot and jump into
the river about noon and then spend the day floating down the river till you get back to the village. The tubing is fantastic, I was really looking forward to it and it was better then I expected - you just float along incredulously looking at the mountains and paddy fields until you come across river bars. Every bar has a group of kids that either throw you a rope or swim out and bring you in, once at the bar you get the usual beer Lao or six (or choose from the 'special menu' - complete with 'happy pizza' and 'special Opium tea') and then you either walk up to one of the caves or you have a go on their river swings - they've got these massive, zip line type swings that you climb up to and then basically swing out over the river and jump in (bonus points for somersaults), the hard bit is swimming back before the current pulls you off to the next bar! They are so much fun, its a real all day party with tens of westerners just getting smashed and flying into the river!! (I've stuck some pics below) met a load
of really sound people that we went for drinks with the next day! Anyways about seven hours, six bars, hundreds of swings and god knows how many beer Laos and tiger whiskies we arrived back at Vang Vieng!! Its quality - stevo you'd love it! (drunk girls in bikinis and water slides!) sometimes you've got to pinch yourself.
I met a really interesting American hippy at one of the river bars - he was a vietnam vet that had been been thrown 'in the brig' for 11 years for going AWOL!! He has a license to grow his own weed in Hawaii because of a back injury - my arse a back injury!
Anyways, we stayed out till five in the morning just drinking and watching the world cup final - although in truth I think we were drinking ourselves sober from about 8.
Spent the next day taking it very easy, watching the office DVDs and rehydrating!!
Went to Poukham cave today the far side of the river. (I've got to read more and come up with some more adjectives, amazing/beautiful and cool are being over used) and again this place was incredible! We caught
a tuk tuk to as close as we could get and then had to walk the last 2 KM - Dulces back was still hurting after she crashed off one of the water slides pretty badly so I wasn't sure how much we would get to see! The walk was like something from 100 years ago, in the shadow of a giant limestone mountain, passing paddy field after paddy field with teams of farmers in bamboo hats and fellas sitting outside their huts making fishing nets and little kids playing in the puddles! The people are lovely everyone says hello (Sai badee) and asks where you are going and gives you directions! Anyways we got to a beautiful lagoon just at the foot of the mountain - but no cave! A local woman pointed us toward the mountain and said cave! We found what wasn't really a path more of a vertical cliff with a few foot holds and a lot of wet mud - it had an arrow painted on a rock and cave written beneath it (ah the Laos tourism board!).
Anways after climbing about 200 metres on jagged rocks and mud we got to this cave
with a reclining budda inside (god knows how they got that in here) - we wondered about 300 metres inside this cave complete with head torches on and looking as filthy as welsh minors (alsatians the lot!!!) before deciding that we had no idea where we were going and had nearly killed ourselves enough times to stop tempting faith. About half an hour later we got back to flat ground and noticed that absolutely nobody else had been dumb enough to try and climb in! Don't think I'll be able to talk Dulce into this type of thing again.
We spent about an hour or so jumping off a tree into this really beautiful, scenic, random turquoise lagoon (I love Laos - if this was Ireland there'd be a tribe of knackers and an american tour bus). Then we headed for home through paddy fields and across really rickety dodgy bamboo bridges!!
Man this place is just fantastic, have I mentioned that I love it - the best country in asia so far. All the beauty of Thailand but completely unspoilt and without the developers (for now).
Anyways we're catching a VIP minibus to Luang Prabang tomorrow
- we were going to take the local bus but apparently the road is so hilly that one fell off the road two weeks ago - Ian (ex-RAF chap) met a guy that showed him the photos of his bus - lying on its side at the bottom of a hill)!! I'm sad to leave this place but you only get a fourteen day visa and Luang Prababng is met to be fantastic, plus have some people that we've arranged to meet up with.
Hope alls well at home and you're not working too hard - keep in touch.
Love
Noel & Dulce xX
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mum
non-member comment
cakes
hope you choose not to sample opium cake have not seen pics of tigers yet tubing looked scary you be careful whats the story on gibbons luv in tons mum dad