Another day LP and backpackers' city Vang Vieng

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Last day Luang Prabang

We have had some rain in LP (makes sense, after all it's the rain season now), but our last day the weather was fortunately perfect. We decided to go on a boat tour to a cave in Pak Ou, which is best known for all the Buddha images that are left behind there. The cave was nice, but the stops we made on the way (to see paper being made and check out a wiskey village) were actually really fake.. Imagine, you stop somewhere, everybody gets out of the boat, all the people of the village have their little shops and they try to sell you stuff (imagine 10 times the same kind of scarfs, shirts, etc) , then before you leave the next load of tourists is already arriving. Not really genuine..

After our own little bike tour (imagine us driving on crappy bikes on rocky, dusty, want-to-be roads, trying to find cheaper bus tickets because according to the LP the tickets were supposed to be cheaper than the ones we had seen, without success by the way, finding out that the market we wanted to see was a very smelly local market we didn't find that interesting, altogether a big success thus 😉..) we had a great dinner... We went to a little restaurant along the river, with many cute little lights, great Lao food and surprisingly good Lao wine (which we tried again a few days later in another bar and over there it was a disaster, pity..). Very romantic thus 😉.. It was really one of the best dinners we've had till now, which again prooves the fact that the best thing to eat somewhere is always the local food..

Way to Vang Vieng

After a long search to find the best price for the way to Vang Vieng, we finally decided to go to Vang Vieng by minivan and paid a lot more than the Lonely Planet said the way would cost (trust me, this travellers bible isn't always right, as we discovered already more often..). The trip to VV was quite a trip, through the mountains, over narrow roads with lots of curves. We heard afterwards that this road wasn't the safest one, which was proven by the accident that had happened like a few minutes before we arrived at the spot. A gas car had hit a bus sideways, so the way was blocked. It was funny (well, funny??) to see that the laidback attitude of the Lao people also showed here.. Everybody was just watching, no action.. We were worried this might take hours, but fortunately our minivan could pass the accident somehow. But in a way the trip was also interesting, it was really cool to see all the incredible tiny villages, just existing out of tiny wooden shed-like houses and the scenery was pretty amazing. However, we were happy to arrive in Vang Vieng after the 6 hours not so comfi trip.. 😊

Vang Vieng

City of backpackers.. That's pretty much the description of Vang Vieng. The nature around it is gorgeous, but the city itself is not more than just a whole lot of backpackers facilities..Guesthouses, bars, restaurants, tour agencies, in a not so pretty city. It's mostly about all the activities you can undertake, like tubing, kayaking, swimming, trekking and, what we came for, caving. Besides that there's also a nice backpackers-atmosphere in the evenings, partly due to the 'happy tea', 'happy pizza' and that stuff, haha.. (guess what the happy stands for..).

We really wanted to see the caves, but since we thought the tour was pretty overpriced (12$!) we decided to do as many others and explore the caves by ourselves. It meant a lot of walking, biking and even climbing. No kidding, the real thing, we were really surprised that this was necessary too.. But we felt pretty cool that we managed to do it, we haven't seen anyone else doing it when we were there. A few other guys were just bathing in the river, what made it clear to use why some people stay that long in Vang Vieng.. If the weather is good it's pretty amazing, swimming in the cool and clean river, enjoying the sun or the shadow in little wooden houses, not bad.. We did regret not taking our bikinis with us, for sure!

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