thewills'wanderings

We left Luang Prabang a week ago by bus and headed for Vang Vieng, the adventure town of Laos. The bus trip was an adventure in itself with a landslide on the road causing us to wait for an hour while it was cleared. Tim was out there in the pouring rain clearing rocks from the road. Lots of fun. I stayed dry in the bus with Charlotte and read my book!
Arriving in Vang Vieng we soon realised why so many young travellers descend upon this place. The scenery is stunning with limestone rocks jutting out everywhere. You can do all sorts of outdoorsy stuff here, mostly on the Nam Song River but also caving, mountain biking and rock-climbing. In the dry season the river is clear, but now with lots of rain starting to fall it’s brown and swollen. There’s no industry anywhere so it’s pretty clean though, a nice change from the stinky Mekong River.
Tubing is the main attraction in Vang Vieng which is quite hilarious. You pay for a tube, a life-jacket(if you want one) and a tuk-tuk ride to the get-in point of the river. At this point most people spend a couple of hours drinking huge volumes of alcohol at the bars set up next to the river. There’s load music pumping out of the sound systems and you can buy whiskey in small buckets and then drink with straws with your friends. It’s crazy! There’s also plenty of hashish on offer. Seeing the effects of a day spent doing this is quite awful as they all stagger into town in the evenings. It’s no wonder that 4 or 5 backpackers a year die doing this! They have huge rope swings and slides set up next to the river so as you float down you stop and risk your life on those. Because the river is running really high, once you’ve jumped someone throws a tube out to pull you in so you don’t get swept away. Tim took the three big girls on the tubing trip on the first day and they loved it ,especially the big swings!
One day we hired bikes and all went on an adventure, caving and swimming in a river. Another day we did a guided mountain trekking trip which was awesome. Jungle bashing, leeches, caving, eating kebabs cooked on an open fire, kayaking. All for a fraction of the cost of a trip like this in NZ. What more could you ask for? Tim’s going to do a blog entry on the outdoor industry in Laos.
We left Vang Vieng on Sunday and are now in Vientianne, the capital of Laos. It’s quite a nice city, again quite French and have been taking it quite slow here, doing a bit of schoolwork, getting washing done etc. Yesterday we found a waterpark with slides which was great for a cool off and then headed to a museum that was all about raising awareness of the effects of UXO’s(unexploded ordanances) in Laos. I had no idea how hugely affected Laos has been by the bombing by the US during the Vietnam War. More bombs were dropped in Laos than in World War 1 and 2 combined. Every year over 400 people die or are seriously injured by exploding bombs. The centre we visited tries to educate local people about the dangers of them. Because they can make money by selling the scrap metal, so many go looking for them to sell. It shows how desperately poor you must be if you’d risk your life to make money like that. It was quite an education for us all. It’s also a rehabilitation centre where they make prosthesis and try to help people adjust to life without a limb.
Well, this is our last day in Laos. Today at 3pm we fly from Vientianne to Hanoi in Vietnam. We’re looking forward to being on the coast and enjoying lots of swimming while we explore Vietnam. We’ve heard mixed reports on Vietnam. It’s supposed to be a faster pace than Thailand or Laos with lots of aggressive people trying to sell you things. This is so unlike Laos where you sometimes have to wake people up to buy things! If not wake them up, at least get them to stop watching TV. They are seriously obsessed with TV-maybe because it’s quite new for them.
We’ve all now reached the point where we’re craving a bit of home cooking. Eating out 3 meals a day is actually a bit tiresome, although we don’t miss the dishes! Yesterday we actually went looking for a toaster thinking we could make our own toast in our guesthouse because we do have vegemite(thanks, Karen!). Unfortunately the toasters were so expensive so we decided to flag that idea. Instead we’re having croissants, and rolls which are great!

This entry was posted on Tuesday, July 7th, 2009 at 7:12 pm and is filed under Travel. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.