Kayaking and Rockets in Vang Vieng

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Vang Vieng
2nd May

We arrived in the gorgeous riverside 'town' called Vang Vieng around 5.30pm after a 4 hour bus ride from Vientiane. Very scenic along the way - and quite quick as far as bus trips go for us lately, so that was a bonus!

Vang Vieng is well known on the backpacker trail for it's beautiful river setting with karsts surrounding it, and 'tubing' down the river. There are a heap of riverside 'bars' set up along the banks of the river where they pull you and you tube in with a long bamboo pole so you can have a beer, or two, or three and swing of the massive swings of flying foxes they have set up over the river before letting go and landing in the river. Then, you continue down to the next bar, and so on and so on.

It is also very well known for the restaurants in town that are set up with 'beds' to relax, eat and drink on whilst they play episodes of either 'Friends' or 'The Simpsons' over and over again, all day long...

When we arrived, we were dropped off in the driveway of at a guesthouse that they were obviously hoping we would all stay at. It was right in the centre (Vang Vieng is very small) but as we have an aversion to staying at places that buses drop us off at (and we wanted to try and get a pool) we headed out and looked for something else. We came across a newish hotel called Vansana on the banks of the river that had a pool and gorgeous, bigs rooms. We decided to stay there even though it was $30 usd a night.

3rd May

In the morning we headed off on foot to one of local caves. Not a bad cave as far as caves go, but not as good as the one we had seen in Halong Bay. We had to climb up a heap of stairs to get to the entrance, so the view of Vang Vieng below was gorgeous. We didn't do much for the rest of the day except have a swim at the hotel, although it had started to drizzle and the pool was quite cold, so the swimming didn't last long! We organised to do a day trip the next day starting with tubing in a cave and then kayaking down the river 6km back to Vang Vieng. On the way back to our room for bed, we stopped at the only ATM in Vang Vieng to try and get some cash. Laos was only recently well known for only having one international ATM located in Vientiane. There had been reports that they now had ones in Vang Vieng and Luang Prabang, but there was plently of discussion as to whether they actually worked with foreign cards or not. There was a sign on the ATM door saying 'International ATM' and a small sign saying VISA not working. We thought we'd give it a try (as this had happened before in other countries, but our VISA had worked as it was a debit card, not credit card.) I tod Gav to try for the maximum amount (abotu $100 worth) as we pay a fee every time we withdraw. The machine accepted the card, went through all the motions, and we could even hear the cash clicking over in the machine as it dispensed it. Only problem was, no cash came out. Now what? It was 8pm at night and the bank was closed. No receipt had been issued so we were a bit stuck. We got out of the ATM booth, and I could see that someone had written somethng on a piece of paper stuck to the booth, which someone else had crossed out. Upon looking closer, it read 'This machine steals your money!'. Great!! Gav headed off to send some emails back home to the co-op etc to at least let them know what had happened. Until the tomorrow we would just have to wait! We also decided to move to the guesthouse that the bus had orignally dropped us off at (yeah, yeah) as it was apparently ok and only $8 a night.

4th May

First thing in the morning, we moved guesthouses then Gav went to the bank to try and sort out what had happened. They said they would look into it immediately and to come back later in the day. Gav checked our emails and it appeared that the transaction had already hit our account that night. We had also taken the same amount of cash out a few days earlier in Vientiane, which hadn't come through yet, so our fingers were crossed that this was that withdrawal.

Headed off on our trip (we were the only ones doing this today with the company we had booked through, as the others that had booked as well had apparently drunk too much the night/day before and had pulled out!). We hopped into a jumbo and set off up river for about 20 minutes. We arrived at a small village which we walked through before going to see another local cave. The cave was just a small onw with a buddha in it (and quite a rather large spider at the top) but the village was very real & pretty with ducks, chickens, pigs etc running around everywhere. Lucky there haven't been too many recent outbreaks of bird flu in Laos recently....(only lot's! - a lot of the poeple here are not even eating chicken at the moment)

We then headed off to the next cave where we stripped into our bathers and jumped into tubes (like inner tyre rings), attached a head torch each and made our way under a cave in a water pool and proceeded to pull ourselves along uner the caves with a rope attached inside. This went on for around 10 minutes until we were completely in the dark, except for our torches. The ropes ended here, and we had to get out of our tubes and walk for a few minutes as it was too shallow. After that, the water in the cave went along huge tunnels that appeared to go forever. There was no real current so to speak, so you had to paddle to move along. Very kindly, our guide who was in front of Mia & I (she was sitting on my lap) hooked his feet under our tube so he could pull us along and tols us to just relax. Oh, what a wonderful life! We were in the cave/tunnel for around 1/2 an hour before we decided to turn back. Luckily, as we were the only ones in our group, we had full control of how long we wanted to do something - not very often that this happens. The way back seemed a lot quicker (obviously there was a slight current) and all in all we were in the cave in our tubes for an hour or so. Fantastic thing to do, and again, Mia had a ball after getting over her initial fears when we entered the cave.

After lunch we grabbed some kayaks and headed off down river the 6km back to Vang Vieng. Our guide 'La' came in the kayak with Mia and I (me at front, Mia in middle, and La at the back, and Gav had his own kayak. The river was very calm with some extremely minor rapids. It was so calm that Mia was able to stand behind me most of the way and sit down when we came to the 'rapids'. After a couple of km's we came across where all the 'tubers' started their beer swilling, swing dropping, tubing trips. Each bar was only about 100 metres away from each other, and we counted around a dozen of them. We stopped our kayaks at the bar that had the largest swing and sat back and had a beer watching everone on the swings. Gav & I had a few goes of the flying fox, which was scary enough, and let the drunken boys have their fun on the massive swings.

The rest of the trip was very relaxing, Gav switched kayaks with La after the river became even calmer, so we just cruised down paddling gently for another hour and a half or so.

La told us that the next day a large festival was to be held - 'Rocket festival' where lots of dancing, singing and partying goes on whilst huge rockets are fired over the river into the mountains. The whole purpose being to ensure that the rains come. We also planned to maybe go tubing down the river, but La wasn't sure if the tubes would be running due to the festival. We would just have to wait and see.

We got back 20 minutes before the bank closed, so Gav rushed off to try and sort out what had happened. As we got there, the banks roller doors were nearly fully down with the closed sign on the door. Even though it was too early to close, it was the day before a public holiday for them the next day, so we think they thought they would just shut up early! This didn't stop Gav, who just pushed up the roller door and went in. They didn't mind (I think they had been expecting him) and they gave him a machine print out that showed our card details etc and that the transaction had been rejected. A lot of worry for no reason in the end, but we also counted ourselves lucky that even if we had lost the money, that this would have been the worst thing that had happened on our trip.

Friday

Up the next morning to absolute pouring rain and Gav not feeling very well. It seemed that the rain had settled in for the day, so no tubing for us! Our new guesthouse was ok - no where near as nice as the hotel, but it was all we needed. We didn't do much all day except when we heard rockets being fired off, we headed down to the river to take a look at the festival in the pouring rain.

This was the only festival we had really seen in Asia except for Songkran (the water throwing festival in Thailand) and it was a lot of fun. Heaps of people, mainly locals but also foreigners drinking and dancing in the mud whist these huge rockets were being fired off. nearly everyone seemed quite drunk, including Laos families - mum's and all - and it was a very festive atmosphere.

We hung around for a while, standing in huge puddles and just enjoyed it all. The rockets were huge and quite amazing to watch.

We were heading off on a 6 - 7 hour bus trip the next day to Luang Prabang. We loved our time in Vang Vieng, and although it is extremely touristy, it is a great place to be for a few days, extremely beautiful and a lot of fun.

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Photos

The busy streets of Vang Vieng
It is just soooo relaxed and sleepy here in Laos!