It’s a bit wet here…
We arrived in Vang Vieng, just as the dusty single street town was washed over (on an at least once daily occurence) with a torrential tropical storm. Some days you could see below the clouds onto the jungle covered limestone peaks of the surrounding mountains! Vang Vieng seems to be a building site, and does seem to exist only as a tourist hang out. The main street, or quagmire as it became after the rains, is lined with bars and cafes, too many of which show bloody “Friends” on continuous rotation! Still getting away from all that, you can spend time on the Nam Song river, or catch up with some food other than rice and noodles (we found a homemade pie shop!) and some of the latest pirated movies.
The day after the most torrential rain, and the day when the river was fastest and probably most dangerous, we decided to go tubing. This involves sitting in the middle of a lorry inner tube and floating down the river. In the dry season, I imagine the views are great, but the low cloud kind of obscured everything! There are lots of bars lining the river, and places to zip wire and jump into the river. It proved a monumental effort to get to the banks of the river to stop at all, even with the aid of the owner’s and their big sticks and ropes. We stopped twice, and reckon we only spent 40 minutes on the water- it’s supposed to take 3 hours! Still it was great fun.
Aiming for a bit more control, a few of us went white water kayaking the day after, and combined this with a couple of caves. But no minority villages: just like Buddha statues, I’ve seen enough of these to last a lifetime! The river was much busier with kayakers and people tubing today (as it was lower, slower and a bit safer), and by the late afternoon when we were on the tubing stretch, we’d stopped off in one of the busier bars dubbed a fun park. There was football and boules, river jumping, and of course a nice cold bottle of Beer Laos to enjoy just as the sun came out for the first time all week!
Tags: Travel
Nick