Advertisement
Published: February 23rd 2007
Edit Blog Post
The trip to Vang Vieng was by local bus but unfortunately the locals don’t travel so well so I put my earphones in and tried to ignore it all as I watched the beautiful scenery!
I had been recommended to stay at the Riverside Bungalows and I am so glad that I did - it was a really beautiful setting just outside of town and you had individual bungalows with verandas and nice views. I immediately met some nice English girls - Georgina and Hannah who I was with for the whole time I was in Vang Vieng and we decided to go tubing the next day. Tubing is basically where you float down the river in a tractor tyres inner tube - I don’t know who thought it up but it is a lot of fun. Not only are you going down the river but they have also installed a few bars which you stop at where they are playing loud music and they have zip lines or big trapeze types swings into the river which are also a lot of fun to do! Unfortunately this river suffered the same problem as when we were kayaking and we had
to paddle with our hands most of the way which meant we were very tired and cold (the sun had gone down behind the karst scenery) by the time we got home - I was very proud though because I made it all the way when some people got out and got a tuktuk back to town! On our way down the river we met a really nice group of Ozzies and a Kiwi who joined the group for the next few days.
The following was my birthday! We headed to the Luang Prabang Bakery for breakfast which does lovely yummy pastries! We then headed 15 km out of town to some caves. The first cave was small and not particularly impressive but the second was HUGE. We had to have a guide and thankfully they lend you a torch (attached to a big battery, about a quarter of the size of a car battery!). It took us about an hour to get to the end of the cave a couple of km into the mountain. Most of the time it was quite open but there were a few times when we had to crawl through! It was also
so incredibly humid inside. At the far end there was a bit of a river/lake so Adam and I got in and went for a swim - it was lots of fun but very dark at the same time - we had to carry a torch with us and one minute it would be deep then you would hit a rock - doh! In the evening we went out for dinner and to a bar with a fire but unfortunately because of some trouble between the local Hmong people and the military the curfew had been changed from 12am to 11pm so it was a bit of an early night but it had been a good day.
Where the caves had been there were also another 2 so the next day I hired a bicycle and headed out there again - the road was not as flat as I had remembered. I finally made it and I arrived just as a couple of Ozzie guys arrived on their motorbike (much more sensible mode of transport). We headed off together and headed to the cave where a river goes into it so you get into a tube and pull yourselves
in on a rope (this time I had remembered by head torch!). We soon got to the end of the rope though and it got shallow so we got out of our tubes - it got deeper again though so we started swimming along this river into a cave - it was scary and I was glad that I had met the two boys. We got to a point after we had swam for about 10 minutes where we weren’t sure if anything was going to happen so we stopped and sat at the side and turned our torches off. It was very dark! Normally your eyes adjust to the dark and you can make out shapes - not this time, so we decided to have a little swim to the other side other river and back in the dark - which was actually lots of fun!
On my way back to Vang Vieng I stopped at the Organic Farm for a drink and I tried the lengendry mulberry shake - it was very tasty and the boys were there too which was quite nice.
That evening with the other group of people I had met we headed off
to the Organic Farm again for dinner - which was very very tasty. We shared vegetable tempura which included mulberry leaves which are really nice although it is rather bizarre that you are eating a battered leaf!
Advertisement
Tot: 0.132s; Tpl: 0.01s; cc: 14; qc: 49; dbt: 0.0462s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.1mb