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Published: August 21st 2012
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Vang Vieng
Nam Song River After getting the bus from Vientiane to Vang Vieng, we yet again arrived at another destination in the bloody rain. The rainy season really does live up to its name! We had done our travelling (holiday) homework on the internet and had found what looked like a lovely little place with new modern huts across the river well away from all the morons. After paying eighty pence to cross a dodgy wooden bridge, walking down a muddy road in our flip flops we found our destination. After being shown the huts by a young girl, I soon realised what a powerful tool Photoshop can be. The huts were dark, smelly, damp, and cold, with open outside bathrooms that had long drop toilets. Just to get to the hut I had to walk ankle deep in muddy rain water across the garden. The hut was situated in a lovely position with a west facing aspect but was also about three metres from the fast flowing and quickly rising Nam Song River. I quickly walked back through garden swamp and before Jane knew it we were walking back across the eighty pence bridge towards the main town. We found a guesthouse just a
few metres along the road from the bridge which wasn't great but was pretty clean, it had a hot shower and free Wi-Fi all for £4.50 a night. It was also still at the quiet end of town, far enough away from all the morons.
Vang Vieng is now a famous destination on the backpacker 'banana pancake trail' and all the morons head there for tubing down the Nam Song River. Tubing is what morons call a rubber ring. There doesn't seem to be a specific nationality or gender entrance code for the morons, they let anyone in their gang, British, American, Australian, French, male and female, anyone. All you seem to have to do is wear a vest, swear a lot, have two brain cells and get absolutely trashed on beer, marijuana and opium cigs. They hire a tube (rubber ring) and float down the river, stopping at bars along the way, get wasted and listen to trance music. People have died doing this rite of passage over these last few years and we had no interest in joining the moron gang. The river was brown, muddy, smelly and dangerously fast flowing. It also probably had all sorts
of leeches, river snakes and monsters that look like Susan Boyle lurking in its brown depths. Why anyone would want to this is beyond me, or maybe I'm getting old?!
On the first day we were there it was once again raining so we took walk down the main street. There are lots of bars that play endless episodes of Friends and Family Guy, so we decided to sit down get a few Beer Laos and watch TV (quite enjoyable when you haven't done it for awhile). It was quite nice as it was quiet as most of the morons must have been off messing about on the river getting wasted. We had some food and got an early night to get out of the rain.
The next morning the weather was a little better, it was cloudy, but at least it wasn't raining. We decided to hire bicycles as we had read there was a nice bike ride across the eighty pence bridge to see the real Laos countryside on the other side of the river. First though I wanted to head up river to where the tubing (rubber ring) starts, just so I could laugh at
them and shout 'Morons' as they floated past in a drug induced stupor. Just as we got to the river the heavens opened again! We sheltered next a precarious looking swing bridge (you know the type, like in Indiana Jones and the temple of doom) and happily watched many morons floated by in the rain. OK I’ll stop saying moron now but they are proper nob-heads. When the rain was not so heavy we cycled back to town and again sheltered with Beer Laos and episodes of Friends. The rain just got heavier and we never made to the other side of the river to see the nice countryside.
The next day we decided to get the hell out of Vang Vieng and head to Luang Prabang. The only way to get to Luang Prabang is to get the five hour bus journey. I was slightly worried about this as there had been a lot of rain and landslides are a real problem in Laos. Also, some French moron the night before had told us that they did the trip that day and it took 12 hours as the bus driver had to wait four hours for the flood
to recede before they could continue. Now in the last few months in SE Asia we’ve experienced some pretty awful journeys where we have both been praying to an unknown god we both knew we hadn’t subscribed too. All the forms of transport you get on out here you have to write your name down on a list just in case you die, so they can contact the necessary embassies! However, this journey was something else. The first hour of the journey was very bumpy but that’s the norm in Asia, and the bus driver drove at a max speed of about 5 mph as he carefully avoided the majority of the big potholes. Just as the bus started to climb the mountains and I thought ‘here we go’ the bus suddenly died, rolled backwards and eventually stopped about a hundred meters down road. Oh bloody hell. Yes the bus had broken down, in the rain, halfway up a mountainside. Most of the passengers were western travellers and we all looked around puzzled and assumed they would soon be sending a replacement bus to pick us up. We suddenly realised that this is Laos, there are no replacement buses, no
AA breakdown and we were going to be there awhile. After about two hours the bus drivers somehow fixed the problem and we set off again and I joked to Jane that I hoped it wasn’t the brakes. After climbing higher and higher until I didn’t think we could climb anymore the joke was soon backfiring on me and I was started to panic. We were on an old bus which possibly had dodgy brakes on a precarious road in the heavy rain. As we reached the top of the mountain peaks I must admit the views were fantastic, but all I just wanted to do was get the hell off and walk the rest of the way. I just couldn’t understand why anyone would build a road so high up. The next thing really made me poop my pants. The bus approached a stretch of road where half of it was missing….yes swept down the mountain side after a recent landslide. The bus driver must have thought it was safe though, as someone had kindly put small cones as a guide around the bit he needed to avoid! Bloody small cones to protect us, 'Oh my god'. As he
drove slowly across the hundred metre stretch only just avoiding the small cones, Jane closed her eyes and I had a birdseye view of my potential resting place to my right hand side. You may think I’m being a bit dramatic but you weren’t there man, it was real scary stuff. Once we were at the other side I breathed a sigh of relief until I looked back at the road and could see that most of the mud underneath the road had been hollowed out by the landslide. It looked like a piece of melting snow on a rooftop that could go at any time. The sun soon went down and we had another six hours of this horror ride in the dark. After we arrived in Luang Prabang I wanted to kiss the ground.
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Anne Ash
non-member comment
Morans!
I think you have definately travelled at the right age. Ten years ago you would have both been joining in with them! KEEP SAFE it wont be long before you are in the Oz sunshine. Great reading your blogs.