In The Tubing

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Vang Vieng was kind of hard to leave. We had such a chilled out time there.

On our 3rd day we we hit the tubing place, got our tubes and our hands marked with a number each in permanent marker. We were group 9-13. Everyone in VV wear these florescent t-shirts/shorts/tanks/hats/bags that say "in the tubing"..we don't quite understand this grammatically incorrect phrase, but it works for the farang...and that's pretty much all you can find in any store. When you combine the same articles of clothing, paired with the bright blue permanent marker # on the back of your hand it almost resembles an army of zombies of sorts, especially when there is alcohol/drugs involved!

Anyway, they drove us roughly 5 kilometers away from the center of town and we got in our tubes. The view was spectacular, the sun was shining and we had the river alllll to ourselves! We got to an area where we saw a somewhat shabby looking bar called, Fluid. We disembarked our tubes and went up the stairs. As we looked around you could see the remnants of what used to be several bars, slides, swings etc. on both sides of the river. We couldn't believe it. It was like a ghost town. We've seen the youtube videos of the madness around this small area on the river. All of that is no more. And we were oh so glad. The bar was chilled out with a rooftop area facing the river. It had foosball, darts, a pool table and cheap beer and food. We hung there for a few hours until we saw numbers 95-103 start showing up. It was time to go. Though the river filled up with more people, it was still very serene. Along the second part of the river we encountered a few small 'rapids'. They were slow but fast enough to make it a little more fun. We got back around 4pm slightly tired but feeling good. A day well spent.

The rest of our time in VV was spent enjoying the scenery, eating lots and drinking a bit. We found a cool bar called Full Moon run by a family. Their 13 year old son was a really cool kid who in Daves opinion ran the place. He was the resident DJ with a Mac, dj software and an ever growing collection of music. He was good! Dave bonded with him and even ended up fixing another one of his laptops. He was quite thankful and we basically got free Beer Lao for the next 2 days. We spent most of our evenings there.

After 5 days we really needed to move on. Time was running short and we still had to travel Vietnam from North to South and around Cambodia. We left a day before our other friends did and took a 3 hour bus to the capital, Vientiane.

We spent 3 days in Vientiane and it was nice. SUPERRRRR hot though (even for Dave), probably the hottest place we've been to so far. So walking around too much proved a bit difficult. We did see the night market, the river, the big golden Pha That Luang Stupa and the Patuxai Arch. The Americans donated the funds as well as the concrete in the 1950's to build a new airport runway. The Laotians used it all to build the Patuxai Arch instead! It is nicknamed "The Vertical Runway". It also resembles the Arc De Triumphe.

We also visited the COPE Centre for Rehabilitaion. It is a centre set up to assist and educate people suffering from disabilities related to the Secret War we mentioned in the last blog. The Americans went into Laos at the same time as the Vietnam War in order to stop the spread of Communism from Northern Vietnam and the rebel party in Laos. They bombed Laos for 9 years! The ordnance droppped was more than 2 million tons. The equivalant to a plane load of bombs every 8 minutes, 24 hours a day for 9 years! That's just insane (Annnnd in the end...Laos is to this day a Communist country). The ordnance was dropped all over the country, mostly in the countryside. Except, as much as a third of the ordnance dropped were unexploded at the time of impact. In the years to follow, villagers would collect the UXO's (unexploded ordnance) and sell it for scrap metal or use it around the house for pretty much anything. Many would get blown to pieces when digging for these UXO's or their fires for cooking might heat the ground beneath causing the UXO's to explode. Children would also go and try to collect some to help their families buy food and supplies and suffer a similar fate. Sadly, there are sooo many people still living with physical deformaties caused by these bombs.

This centre educates villagers about the dos' and don'ts of UXO's and offers many rehab programs, also to non war related injuries. Their main purpose is to help people gain better mobility by providing them with new prosthetics.

We were shocked, sad, mad and informed. We made a small donation and will probably make more from home. It really touched us.

Our little travel group as we were all parting ways and going in different directions the next day so we decided to have a nice fancy dinner. We chose a lovely french restaurant facing the fountain in the centre of town. We all had steak. It was FABULOUS. Dave and I have been missing some nice vino since we got here (the only time we've had some was for our amazing V-day dinner with "Our Brits" in Lipe) so we got a bottle of Merlot. The whole night was really nice, and we ended up only spending about 20$ each!! For a tasty steak, soup, salad, appetizer, desert and VINO! Did we mention we love S.E. Asia?!?

We needed to book our further travels to Hanoi, Vietnam which we've been dreading. The journey hasn't been receiving the kindest of reviews and flying wasn't an option. We will add a seperate blog outlining this bus trip.

Love,

D & A

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