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Published: March 20th 2011
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Travel Day to Vang Vieng
From Luang Prabang we traveled by bus to Vang Vieng. An extremely nauseating car ride but the views were worth it. The unfortunate thing when doing a group tour with fixed travel days is that you're often stuck on the group tour schedule. The tour I am on has given me about a week in Laos and it hasn't been enough. Luang Prabang was a great start, from there we moved on to Vang Vieng and I'm not sure that the latter is really showing Laos for Laos. I will explain. Vang Vieng is famous throughout Thailand and Laos for it's "tubing experience." Basically you rent a tube, a tuk tuk will take you and a group of about 10 other people up the river to the start of the float. We started our tubing day around 12 noon and went until about 6. In 3km worth of floating there are 30 bars alongside the rivers. When you are floating down the river the bars try to entice you to stop at their bar by playing loud music and throwing a filled waterbottle at you attached to a rope, sort of like an anchor to get your attention. I began to hate these water bottles after awhile as I got beaned in the head twice by them while I was enjoying my
float down the river. The bars on the river also have various attractions such as waterslides, these huge tarzan like rope swings and mud volleyball. As a group we started at one bar, and went to 4 more bars over the next few hours. The experience is not so much about floating/relaxing down the river, but it's about drinking at the bars. That being said, I winged it, had way too many buckets with M-150 (another version of redbull) and was a dance machine for most of the day. We had fun as a group, everyone drank way too much and of course, by 6pm we were done for the day. It was a fun experience but I can't say I would like to do it again. It took most of us a few days to recover. Though, there are people who visit Vang Vieng and will go every single day. Most of the bars along the river have a main bar in the town of Vang Vieng, so when you go to the bar on land they will give you a bracelet of some sort that works at their bar on the river or vice versa. The sole goal
Travel Day to Vang Vieng
On bus rides I try to take photos of the world around me as I drive through it. In Laos all the communities live right alongside the highways. of people who work at these bars is to get you trashed. Many of the people that work at the bars are travelers who take a job at the bar, they don't make any money but are given free booze and food. The ones I met are just walking around half cut all the time yelling their bar names and trying to hand out booze bracelets. So that pretty much summarizes Vang Vieng. The area we stay in, is full of bars and restaurants catering to the tubing crowd. The bars in Vang Vieng also close earlier then other clubs in Asia in the hopes of keeping the town quiet. Once the bars close, people can opt to head to the island. The island somehow doesn't have to follow the rules of Vang Vieng and the bars on there can stay open late. Unfortunately, these days they aren't allowed to play music. So think about it, you're at a bar dancing the night away, the bar closes, you head to the island and sit in silence and keep drinking. That was not that appealing for me at all.
Although Vang Vieng is coming across as a one trick pony, we
Travel Day to Vang Vieng
The locals always use umbrellas to keep cool under the hot sun. did do a few other things while here. We tubed/swam through a cave just outside of the town, and in the same day we had a fun kayaking trip down the river. I've never kayaked before and I really enjoyed it. The trip was about 10km, and you get to kayak through the tubing party and make fun of all the drunks being silly at the bars.
In total we were in Vang Vieng for 5 days, most of us wished that it had been a shorter time and we could have gone somewhere else to see more of Laos. I am one of them. But I do not regret in any way visiting Vang Vieng.
I do not have any photos of the tubing or the kayaking as I didn't want to risk ruining my camera. The photos I have for this posting show the beautiful drive from Luang Prabang to Vang Vieng and a few shots from Vang Vieng.
I hope you are all enjoying my blog. Next up Cambodia!
Cheers.
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