Vang Vieng

---

Buses in Laos are privately owned and run. Our guesthouse sold us the tickets at the same price as everywhere else charged. We left at 2pm on a truck, changed trucks 50m up the road to a second truck. Stopped 50m further up the road to move to a minibus (all of our bags being tied to the roof) to then head to the bus station at 3pm! We arrived late and the bus had left. After several phone calls our minibus driver drove us back to within 50m of our hotel where the bus was waiting at a bus stop. It seemed that the bus ticket had been sold from the bus company to agent 1, to agent 2, to our hotel and in order to justify their respective cuts, each of them provided a small part of the transport - ridiculous! We had been warned that accommodation in Vang Vien was in short supply and that arriving at 7pm (after the bus broke down) we would have limited options. Straight off the bus it was a scram with every man for himself. Leaving Laura to sit in a cafe with the bags I headed off to find us a room. I found us a nice place right on the river at a reasonable price and felt rather pleased with myself. What I couldn't see in the dark was that the flat area beside our hotel was about to become a building site. Power tools, music and digging within 3m of our room woke us at 6Am and we promptly moved hotels! Vang Vien is known as a party town and famous for its 'tubing'. Tubing is where you get given a (clean and inflated) truck inner tyre and dumped 5km up river allowing you to cruise back at your own leisure along the river. It doesn't sound to exciting and wouldn't be if it weren't for the entertainment on the way. There are about 10 riverside bars which throw out ropes and poles to pull you in and each bar has its own unique selling point. The first bar that we went to was owned by the local school and 100% of the profits went to local school projects they proudly stated that this was "probably the only bar in the world where kids benefit from adults drinking". Being the charitable people that we were we had a drink and then took a takeaway beer and mohito (served in leakproof plastic bags) onto the river as we cruised to the next bar. Some bars had rope swings, some zip wires, and one a huge waterside. All had good music and a party atmosphere. We went on all of the 'rides' and returned for a second day of tubing on day 3. The only downsides was when I tied to show off by doing a summersault off a zip wire and wrenched my shoulder back. Fortunately I have been having regular massages each day to relieve my suffering. On day 2 we hired some mountain bikes and cycled to a nearby village and subterranean river cave. We were handed a torch and another tube and pulled ourselves along 200m(ish) of ropes into the deep dark (and cold) cave to look at the stalagmites and stalactites - good fun. On the 3rd day we went tubing again getting drunk and flying off things - brilliant fun. In the evening, Vang Vien became a 50:50 split of people continuing to party at the bucket bars (you buy a small bucket full of rice-whisky coke and redbull and several straws) and those comatosed in one of the ubiquitous bars showing non-stop back-to-back episodes of "Friends". Unbelievably there were several such places and all of them were packed! We split our evenings between eating as much steak as we could get our hands on and jumping around in bars. A good fun 3 days before heading to Luang Prabang and the more remote areas of the North.

---

Photos

Heater free zone
Our room came with AC but no heater for the unseasonally cold nights