Tubing in the Vang Vieng

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We left Ponsavanh on a local bus and were very pleasantly relieved to find that the big bus was much better than the evil mini bus and before we knew it we were stopping for donuts and deep fried creepy crawlies half way to vang vieng. The journey was pretty comical, the guy sat behind us had his prize cockerel with him which was quite bizarre but I guess by Laos standards it was pretty uneventful. We got off the bus as the very miserable bus woman screamed vang vieng and literally as our feet touched the ground the bus hared off leaving the world’s biggest bags in the middle of the road. On arrival we kind of got the impression that the local people of vang vieng weren’t a big lover of falang!! After some debating and a lot of sweating we made our way over a very rickety bamboo bridge and checked into a lovely bungalow on what is known as the island. The island is quite bizarre, there are a couple of bars with lots of hammocks in where you can just lie and chill out next to the river overlooking awesome limestone formations and then there are the other bars that play very odd very loud very bad music and are full of cheap booze buckets; we have found the Thailand of Laos!!! On the night we arrived we were sat talking to mum on skype when a massive parade started along the main street, we found out that the next day was the rocket festival or Boun Bay Fay as it is called in Laos. The rocket festival is the call for rain, the rockets are meant to fertilize the clouds and bring with it the rain, so, the people of Laos make enormous rockets and launch them off the banks of the river for the whole day. We decided to spend the rocket festival lying in the hammocks soaking up the atmosphere rather than being sitting ducks in a tyre for any stray rockets (which there were many), the noise they made was so loud, we thought they were planes before we realised what it was!!!! Within an hour of it going dark and all the rockets/missiles stopping we were treated to the most amazing lightening show for two hours followed by an enormous storm, those rockets worked real quick!! Luckily the storm knocked all the power off so we sat for a glorious hour in total silence in the hammocks watching the electrical storm - just amazing. The next day we decided it was time to try some tubing; the activity that vang vieng is famous for. You basically rent a tractor inner tube and float along the Nam Song river stopping off at various bars for some beerlao and to fly down a few zip wires! We had seen a lot of people walking round with big bruises and there are tons of reward signs up for people who have lost their passports etc while tubing so I was feeling a little chicken on the tuk tuk ride up to the launch point but after a few beers we started our way down and we hadn’t made it more than 50m before we were pulled into a bar for a quick beer. The bars were all very funny, some had big mud tug of war pitches while others had giant slides and big swings and zip wires. I was too chicken to go on any of them but tel had a wicked time playing tarzan! The river was quite low as the rainy season hasn’t properly started so it was pretty hard going and after over two hours of paddling and a few sets of mini rapids we got off and got a tuk tuk back to the tube place. We didn’t take the camera as I was convinced it would end up at the bottom of the river so I don’t have any photographic evidence of the day but it was a wicked one! As we had been tubing and sick note was still in one piece we quit while we were ahead and booked the bus to Vientiane for my birthday.

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Photos

The bridge to our room...here goes
Our room