Luang Prabang - Vang Vien - Vientiane

---

Luang Prabang - Vang Vien - Vientiane

At about 9am Monday 3rd August we travelled to Vang Vien by minibus with David and Alana, it took about 6 hours. I can honestly say that it was one of the most amazing drives I have ever experienced (ok, the M25 and A2 do not really give someone a lot of experience to draw from). Having become acclimatised to South East Asian driving, now ignoring the overtaking of several vehicles whilst confronted with oncoming traffic, I was able to just stare at the most beautiful landscape I could imagine. Pretty much the entire journey consisted of climbing and descending mountains by these winding roads that were banked by hill on one side and sheer drop the other. Rach and David reckon we were as high as 4000ft - when we stopped off at a village I bought a packet of crisps that were so inflated I thought it might burst my ear drum if I popped the packet open. We also noticed that as we drove further south towards Vang Vien we started to see fewer Buffalo and more cows that resembled our Jersey cows. These cows also seemed to live a pretty Laos style 'free range life', i.e. they just strode along the roads, or sometimes just stood in the middle of the road whilst bike, motorbike, coach, bus and truck tried to get out of their way, of course whilst still trying to overtake one another.

The terrain became flatter as we drew closer to Vang Vien and the obligatory afternoon monsoon rain set in. When we arrived in Vang Vien, all four of us looked at each other - oh my god where have we come to - why would we leave the beautiful Luang Prabang for this place! It looked like what I imagine middle America, some downtown place that nobody would want to ever live, but they had to, or only drove through. We found a guesthouse for dirt cheap, about 3 pounds a night for the room (hot shower, clean, comfy bed) and then ventured out around town to check it out. Pretty much the town exists as a stop over for backpackers traveling between Luang Prabang - Vientiane and for 'tubing'. Tubing consists of floating down the river on a tractor inner tube from a point on the river that is about 3km north of Vang Vien for a few hours whilst stopping off at various bars, playing on zip wires and swings etc etc. It started off well, we managed to be pulled in to the first bar (basically consisting of a tyre being swung at you, you catching it and then Lao boys/guys pulling you in). So we moved on and agreed that we would go to this bar further up that looked really nice, deckchairs, hammocks, but I got completely took along with the river and managed to miss about 3 or 4 tyres that were hurled out at me whilst everyone quite easily got to the bar. Off I went, down the river, on my own. I decided to try and get out at the next bar on the other side of the river. The Lao guys at this bar hurled a tyre, which I missed, so they hurled out an empty coke bottle tied to a rope, hoorah I managed to catch this one, but I was in a bit of a current in the river and they had to pull really hard for me to get in resulting in really really painful rope burn on my left hand (which I might add, is STILL healing, a week later, everything takes longer to heal out here). Relieved I was back on dry land and the others joined me about 5 minutes later. At this bar, Rachel, David and Alana had a go at the zip wire and trapeze swing. I, being the wimp that I am, was photographer instead. All went well until Alana had her go. Alana, thinking she was on the trapeze swing was actually on the zip wire and instead of letting go just before it hit the end of its run she held on tightly, resulting in a horrific, you've been framed style triple back flip into the river. David and I were on the side, and we both gasped in horror as we both honestly thought that she would be knocked out when she fell. David ran down to the riverside but luckily Alana was ok and was just a bit disorientated. Her flip from the zipwire gave her a bit of a legendary status as people that we chatted to later were all chatting about it with her. David managed to catch it on film so it got passed around a lot, I found it pretty hard to watch as she just looked like a rag doll and it was pretty scary at first. The rest of the day pretty much consisted of us floating some more down the river, popping into a few bars and then sauntering down the last stretch of river that took in some amazing views of the limestone karsts that Vang Vien first become notorious for. That evening us four had a really good meal up on the side of the river in an Asian style seating area, it was lit up really beautifully and made for a good chilled out evening - there was even some more card playing, as if we hadn't already had enough!

The morning after, Wednesday 5th August, we decided to hire some bikes and head out to the local caves before we got our bus to Vientiane in the afternoon. This was so much fun. We set out on some old fashioned Dutch bikes with a hand drawn map of Vang Vien. We rode on the bumpiest, stoney 'road' you could imagine, with various chicken related hazards and mud ditches. Eventually after about an hour we reached a track that led us to a cave. To get in we had to pay these Lao children and 2 of them assigned themselves as our guides, they couldn't have been more than 8 years old. We then walked to the caves along this dried up stoney river bed until we got to this little forested bit that had a small entrance to the said cave. Both Rach and I had envisioned the caves to be big and open with lots of visitors, but this was an enclosed cave and we were the only ones there, we would never have found it on our own. Going through the cave was ok but there was a point where they wanted to take us but it would have involved going through a tunnel and we were like 'no no no no thankyou, can we go back, please!'. We rode back and over the little toll bridge, had a really nice photo taken by these french people of the four of us and our bikes, showered, checked out and then it was time to get on our bus to Vientiane. Our bus arrived but unfortunately had a flat tyre, so we left just over an hour later than scheduled as the whole wheel had to be replaced. I feel for anyone when they have to do seriously hard manual work in this heat, we all sat and watched in the shade fanning ourselves whilst they changed a coach's tyre.

Finally we arrived in Vientiane, the capital of Laos at about 6pm. As per usual, we were dropped outside of the city so had to get a ride into the centre. The four of us decided to find accommodation together and started to look around the main guesthouse district - but everywhere was full or ridiculously out of budget. We started to get a bit concerned that it was getting dark and we had nowhere to stay. Luckily Alana managed to find somewhere and it sounded cheap, especially for a capital city. We had a look at the room, it wasn't great, it had beds, it looked reasonably clean and ensuite bathroom, but had no window and just didn't have a good feeling about it, but as it was late we took it. That night we got some food and had a walk around the city. The city wasn't as nice as Luang Prabang but Rach and I felt that as long as we found a new guesthouse for our 2nd night it would be a fair place to spend a couple of days before our flight to Hanoi on the Friday. We bumped into some people who we had spoken to on the bus from Vang Vien and who had been on our slow boat. We all stopped for a drink (well, truth be told I had a fruit shake...) and had a good relaxing chat. Reluctantly, we had to go back to our hotel and as we walked up the stairs we could just feel the heat hit us. Whilst we were making planes for breakfast the following morning we started to realise why the hotel had this horrible atmosphere, it seemed to be used as a brothel. Yep, we finally experienced some of the underground Asian=Western culture. One of the guys who was with this Lao 'lady' was probably my age, Rach and I just couldn't believe why he would want to sleep with a prostitute, it really stayed with us, even the next day we were just so shocked as to why he would do that, he looked just a normal guy, but hey, each to their own.

The next morning, we all met up for breakfast in one of Vientiane's many cafes quite early in the morning (we all couldn't wait to get out of our rooms). Sadly, we had to say goodbye to Alana and David as they were flying out to Hanoi that day and had different plans for Hanoi to us so we knew that it was unlikely that we would see each other again. After breakfast Rach and I found a new guesthouse to stay in, it was a little bit more expensive than the one from the previous night but included breakfast so actually worked out cheaper! Crucially though, it was lovely, it was really clean, professionally run and had signs everywhere stating that no guests could brought up into the rooms. It was only the 2nd place we had stayed with shared bathrooms but the bathrooms were immaculate and someone was always cleaning. We were so excited and relieved to be staying there! The rest of the day Rach and I did some sightseeing and had an amazing lunch in this canadian run cafe called Jomar. I had this foccacia (sp?) filled with salad, tuna, cheese, mustard, mayo with some guerkins on the side - it was soooo good! Soooo tasty! In the evening Rach and I stopped for some dinner and sat outside of this quite swanky restaurant that had lanterns in the trees, very romantic. Rach tried a traditional Lao dish of chicken with herbs, she loved it. We then went back to this cafe near our guesthouse for some ginger, lime and honey tea (it was sooo spicy but good) and more importantly we went to watch some Asian soaps, which are fantastic. Shockingly, I actually recognized one soap we watched from one that I had seen in Chiang Mai, Thailand, when Rachel was ill.

Friday, 7th August, Rachel and I walked around Vientiane some more and sat in some cafes waiting until we could feasibly go to the airport. We got a tuk tuk to the airport at about 2 and sat there reading and watching some kind of martial art competition waiting to check in. Once checked in, we had our last Lao Ovaltine and boarded the place. Even though I was quite nervous about the flight I am so glad we flew with Vietnam Airlines. Our plane was really good, the hostesses were attentive, the seats were very comfortable and I thought the leg room was very generous considering it was only an hour long flight. The Lao Airways planes looked tiny and they were the type that had propellers for engines as opposed to the ones you normally see at home.

Sorry this has been such a long blog, I start them and save them as I go along but always get distracted and never finish them!

I have mixed feelings about Laos. I loved, absolutely loved Luang Prabang but was quite disappointed by Vang Vien. I knew that it was going to be touristy and very backbackery but I thought that the scenery would make up for it. It was only really when we hired the bikes that we got to see any of the famed scenery. The Lao people in Vang Vien just seemed really unhappy to be there and it just felt like a really strange place. It was a come down I think after the amazing scenery we had seen on the drive down from Luang Prabang. Vientiane was nice, it had lots of good eateries, still very inspired by the French, but it didn't really leave me wanting more. I definitely think I'd like to go back to Laos sometime to see the south as we only saw a very small part of Laos and perhaps to see how its developing and coping with the influx of tourism. We got the feeling from Laos that they are trying to maintain their culture whilst embracing tourism, there was a huge emphasis on maintaining their environment (free plastic bottle refilling stations to save on plastic waste) and lots of travel agencies offering sustainable 'ecotourism' projects that benefited the local people. After all, Laos apparently has only been open to tourists for just over 15 years so its in its infancy.

---