Vang Vieng

We had to be at the bus pick up in Pai at 2pm, for the first leg, this was a minibus back down the mountain to Chang-Mai.  We were then dropped at a bus company office at 5pm and told we had till 7pm till the next bus leaves, so we went for food.  At 7pm we were duly back at the office and at 8.30pm we were still waiting.  By 9pm a very small minibus had arrived already full of people, this was not the sleeper bus described by the lady in the booking office.  As we were last to be picked up we had to sit up front with the driver, he was a real miserable git.  I was not happy at the prospect of having to 10hours trying to sleep, whilst he drove like a nutter.  Anyway i took a Valium which made absolutely no difference what so ever, therefore it was one of the longest most frustrating journeys ever.  At 7am we arrived at another bus company office who gave us the most revolting cup of tea and egg (i think!) sandwich, while we filled out the forms for the Laos immigration.  That was all fairly painless, there is a scale for what you pay depending on what country you are from, for the UK it was £35 each.  So again you get stamped out of Thailand then back on the minibus through no mans land a bit and then through the Laos immigration.

By that point the minibus left us so we got a saengthaw into Vientiane to meet our next and last bus.  I think it was about 10am by then, the next bus left @ 11am, and it took another 4.5 hours to get to Vang Vieng.  So about 26 hours after we left Pai we arrived in Vang Vieng, i had already booked accommodation and I am so glad i did, as i was not in the mood to be looking for somewhere to stay.

So this was the first sight of our new home.

Vang Vieng lies on the Nam Song river. The most notable feature of the area is the karst hill landscape surrounding the town. Vang Vieng had become a back-packer orientated town.  Attractions of the town include inner tubing and kayaking on the Nam Song River, which until October 2012, was lined with bars selling Beer Lao and Lao-Lao, and equipped with rope swings, zip lines and large decks.  The local community have organised themselves into a cooperative business to seel tubing as an activity, in a system that 1,555 households participated in.  The houses are divided into 10 village units and each village unit taking its turn on a ten day rotation to rent out the inner tubes.  This was all started by Thanongsi Sorangkoun, and owner of an organic farm in Vang Vieng, in 1999 when he bought a few tubes for his farm volunteers to relax on along the river.  Since 1999 it has grown and grown until it was like a backpacker rite of passage.  Unfortunately things started to go wrong, until in 2011 it was reported that 22 tourists died in the river.  A lot of the bars were selling drugs and giving away shots left right and centre, and those things just dont mix with water, then throw in a couple of rope swings and the whole thing turned into a disaster.  Anyway then last year the police came in and tore nearly all of the bars down and dismantled all the decks and rope swings.  All of this has resulted in Vang Vieng town being a bit of an odd place.  The New Zealand Herald wrote, "If teenagers ruled the world, it might resemble Vang Vieng.  All the bars sell the same food, burgers and pancakes and they all play the same tv shows over and over, Family Guy and Friends.  Now that it is not a major party not that many people are going and that is a worry for the town. 

Hopefully people will start to go for the natural beauty of the area as we did, and we still did a little tubing!.  On the first day we decided to be very adventurous and hired mountain bikes.  We were headed for the Blue lagoon which was about 7 km away.  Now i havent been on a bike for about 10ish years so it took a little while, but pretty soon we were off.  The roads were pretty awful and it was pretty hot, but there was lots of beautiful scenery along the way.

 

 

Tham Poukham - Blue Lagoon is a spring fed lagoon at the bottom of "Golden Cave". The waters are inhabited with a few hundred carp that will eat locally sold fish food out of your hand. The lagoon is stunning, it has been turned into a kind of picnic area and there were loads of local kids there throwing themselves of trees.  The water was absolutely freezing, exactly what we needed after that long, hot, dusty bike ride.

To get to the cave above its a 100m climb up a makeshift bamboo ladder.

Once inside, there is a short walk to the Sleeping Golden Buddha and glimmering stalactites about 300 m further inside.  Now i haven't been in a lot of caves, but i really wasn't to sure about it.  We did go in and Craig thought it was great but i did not really feel comfortable, it was quite deep.  It was quite spectacular though to see the different rock formations.....

It was then a very long dusty, but not quite so hot pedal back to base.  On arriving home, Craig helpfully pointed out the welcoming committee on the bridge........

Dinner was a hasty affair, then a shower and bed to rest our very out of practise bodies.

The next day we planned to go tubing but when we arrived it was like Spring Break had descended on Vang Vieng for the day and there were loads of them.  So plan B was to hire out the bikes again, and head  to a waterfall 8km in the other direction out of town.  To start with it was ok but it got worse.  The roads were worse than the day before and it was very mountainous, so just up and down and up and down.  It seemed really much hotter than the day before and i have to admit i found it really hard work.  There were a couple of times where i really wanted to give up, but somehow i kept going, giving myself little pep talks along the way.  There was a small village along the way, and i must have looked a state cos all the kids came out and looked quite concerned and a old lady made me sit down and got me water.  Eventually after much puffing and dripping, we made it.  The waterfall was lots of different pools, and seemed to originate from the top of a very high cliff.  It was really beautiful and quite far into the jungle, very peaceful, well apart from, birds, bugs, monkeys etc.

We spent a couple of hours at the waterfall till about 4pm, when we thought we out to head back to ensure being back in town before dark.  But on our arrival back at the car park we found that Craig had a flat tyre.  There was no one around to help, so Craig took my bike and headed very quickly back to the village to get help whilst walked his bike back quite a bit slower.  I walked about half an hour before i saw Craig come whizzing round the corner in the side car of a man from the village.  He had found the local bike mechanic so he had all the kit, well nothing i had ever seen before but it was pretty amusing and it got the job done.....

Then i hopped in the sidecar for a lift back to the village to get my bike, whilst Craig had to peddle back.  We eventually made it back to the outskirts of town about 5.45pm, just as it was starting to get dark.  Although we were really tired we had not had a really good meal since getting to Vang Vieng and i had heard about the stalls where the locals eat on the old airstrip.  As we had the bikes we headed there, and we found heaven.  There was a couple of ladies with bbq's and some with spits, we bought a massive piece of pork belly, with the most amazing crackling for £4.  It was divine, just thinking about it now makes my belly rumble!.

I found this growing near our house, not a clue what it is.........

The next day we got up early to avoid the hordes and headed to the tubing office.  The tubing now appears to be run by only one family and they are a bit like the mafia, i think.  They are very surly and they dont speak just grunt at you to sign and pay a 60,000kip (£6) deposit and a 55,000kip (£5.50), for use of the tubes each.  Once thats done you have to pay extra for the tuk tuk to take you to the "starting point".  The whole thing is a bit of a rip off and they are really not friendly but i can see that if you have had 10 years of drunk foreigners to deal with you probably would be over it. 

So basically they take you to a point in the river about 3km out of town, and off you go..........

As it is the dry season the river was not running too high or fast, so there were a  few bits you had to lift up your bum to clear the rocks, but really it was a very sedate drift downstream.

Suddenly i spotted a swarm of butterflies on the bank, so we had to get out and have a look.

Whilst i was in my element watching the butterflies Craig had got talking to the boy whose families land we were on.  He told him about a cave a 10 minute walk away to we headed off to have a look.  When we got there there was a whole family sitting on a wooden platform, there was a fee to go in and you had to go with a guide, so off we went up and up and up.....

We then had to walk down a very rickety step ladder to get into the cave.  As soon as we walked in there i knew that i definitely wasnt going to like it.  It went in really deep and it was very wet and slippery on the rocks.  We walked in for about 20 minutes and it seemed that you could keep going a lot further than we did.  Again some amazing rocks but i am realising i am not a cave person.

After a quick game of basketball we were back in the tubes.....

About 5 minutes later we came across the only bar open on the river so had a to pop in for a quick one.....

Then you guessed it back in the tubes....

There were a couple of bits where the water picked up a bit but mostly it was very slow, after about 5 hours and getting quite sunburned we saw a sign for tuk tuk.  So we hauled our tubes up the bank and found the man to take us back to town. 

There were loads of lizards around our house but this guy was waiting for us when we got back.

We had decided to head to South Laos to meet up with some friends that we met in Goa.  So the next day we relaxed and packed up ready for the long journey to Don Det, 4000 Islands...................