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Vang Vieng
Reluctantly we packed our bags in Luang Prabang and took a bus to Vang Vieng, only a 5 hr trip away. We had booked a 'VIP' bus, which essentially means you get some water, A/C and the chairs are a bit more comfortable. Within a few minutes of taking this trip the usual cheesy light rock comes on ie. Lional Richie - its not just lightly playing in the back ground but blaring - Ed quickly took action and asked the driver to turn it down much to the dismay of some of the local passengers...it is amazing what the locals can relax and sleep to! The drive itself was very beautiful but very nauseating - narrow, windey mountain roads where the driver was taking sharp corners at about 50km/hr! We stopped along the way and could trade in our bus tickets for a bowl of soup - noodles, meat, and a pile of fresh lettuce and herbs to add, a staple meal over here.
Vang Vieng (VV) is a small town on the banks of the Mekong surrounded by stunning mountains, many of which have caves inside where small temples, buddhas and other places of worship
have been built. It is also a major backpacker spot owing to a collection of bars along the river which offer lots of swings and bungee runs into the river, plying people with buckets of redbull, whisky and coke (a la the full moon parties in the south of thailand) and a launch point for people to go tubing down the river (basically sitting in an inflated tractor inner tube drinking and floating downstream). The place was full of gap year kids (kids who have just finished high school) having a ball, and this sort of attention has caused the town to lose a lot of its character and resemble some sort of homogenous backpacker town- for example there must have 4 different bars in the town with huge video screens playing episodes of Friends non- stop). We thought this will be cool for a few days but not too much longer than that! We havent been massively into the party scene while traveling as a lot of the kids are much younger than us and truthfully we can only handle so many hangovers whilst being in the blazing sun and trying to explore!
We met a very nice
girl on the bus, Raggi from Norway, who would become our travel companion for the next 5 days. We showed up at a hotel marked by Lonley Planet as $25/night, and surprise surprise it was $45, luckily a motorcycle gang of hotel propeiters was waiting outside so Kat and Raggi hopped on the back of 2 to explore the options while Ed guarded our stuff - we found a cheap new hotel a few clicks out of town. The next morning we hired mountain bikes and cycled about 6 km to a nearby mountain with a huge cave system in it. Before climbing up to the cave, we took a dip in the most idyllic part of a river near a bridge, where the water was the clearest blue I've ever seen in my life and full of fish (no idea why the locals don't fish them out of existence- they must be poisonous or something). The half an hour hike up to the cave was worth it, as inside there was a golden buddha statue lit by a few streams of sunlight from outside, and the cave was atmospheric and foreboding, having a gentle breeze and being mercifully cold
inside. We made the mistake of wearing flip flops and while still being wet from swimming, it made climbing down the rocks quite challenging oh and Ed was the only one with a flash light. Other cavers put us to shame with their proper hiking gear on, a guide and a flash light per person. Please take the time to note Ed's caving outfit, the source of hours of amusement for Kat and Raggi.
Later that afternoon we decided to go tubing. After paying way too much money from the tubing mafia we loaded ourselves and our inflated tubes into a tuk tuk and headed to the launch point. There we each got a bucket (literally) of whiskey and coke and red bull, and started our slow float down stream, watching the dancing, drinking and general hell raising going on on the various bars. It was pure debatury going on on the sidelines, something out of Cancun Spring Break. Each bar would try to entice the floaters to come in and would throw buoys to us to try to pull us in. Each bar also tried to outdue the other by having a bigger and more hard core bungy
line for people to jump off of - we heard the week before a Canadian girl died jumping off drunk and breaking her neck - we stuck to the tubes..The river has little water this time of year, and time was against us so we ended up doing a bit of paddling to keep going and got out of the river slightly early in order to get back to town before darkfall.
Ventienne
Laos' capital city was a 4 hr ride from Vang Vieng. We bought tickets for the bus from the hotel we were staying at what we thought was a bargain rate, and this became clear when we were told the bus departed from the yard behind our hotel. Half an hour before the bus was due to leave, there were a few groups of fellow backpackers waiting with us. By the allotted time, there were over 30 people waiting, with more arriving by tuk- tuk all the time.......
We started to wonder just how 'VIP' this bus would be, and how everyone would fit on. Suddenly, a bus arrived and after disgorging its present occupants, there was a scramble aboard. Kat managed to get
on before the last people had got off, and a woman running things told her to get off. Kat, however, was not taking no for an answer and got us some prime seats near the front. Ed meanwhile was labouring outside against the laws of physics trying to fit our three rucksacks into the available space in the luggage hold.
Miraculously, all had seats and bags stowed apart from a young Laos man, who stood awkwardly in the walkway in the bus, vainly clutching his ticket, wondering where he would sit. The manageress took once look at it, shrugged her shoulders and offered him a 10,000 kip discount (about 1 USD). He seemed to agree and unbelievably, a second later a plastic white patio chair was produced from somewhere and he sat down on it in the aisle, just behind the driver. Needless to say, in the event of a head on crash he would have been straight through the window. (And after a few hours travel, the boy actually went to sit on the steps on the floor by the driver rather than on his hot seat!)
Vientiane is actually a bit of a let down compared
Ed's caving outfit
boxers, head lamp, cowboy hat, black handbag to the post card beauty of Luang Prabang and the blatant backpacker mecca of Viang Vieng. There are obvious reminders of the former French influence, both in the architecture and food, and cafes and tree lined boulevards abound. And there are plenty of 'Scandinavian' bakeries - no idea why. Rather than paying through the nose for a same day Vietnam visa, we opted to wait 3 days and killed time drinking some very good red wine, and seeing monuments like their national religious temple (an amazing gold stucture) and their equivalent of the Arc De Triumph. We also found quite a modern gym in the city which we visited a couple of times which charged 6 USD for use of the fitness faciities, pool and and included an hour long massage. Those little girls had powerful hands!
We eventually got our visas through (with 2 hours to spare before our flight) and set off the airport, which from the outsider looked a bit like a deserted office building with a few helicopters parked outside. AK- 47 totting guards who looked about 14 added a bit of gravitas, and they also had the ridiculous restriction on bringing liquids or bottles
of water (even sealed ones) through security. Everything went smoothly and we were soon aboard, Kat settling down to read adverts for 5 star resort hotels in towns we would never visit in the inflight magazine, and Ed zoning out after commenting on how the uniforms of the airhostesses made them look like extras out of a Star Wars movie.....Next stop Vietnam!
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Katie
non-member comment
We should start the bucket trend in Calgary!!