Vang Vieng

After much procrastination we decided to head south to Vang Vieng which has a reputation as the party capital of Laos.  I wanted to go just to see what it was all about and also because I'd heard that there  was a lot of beauty that was overshadowed by its unfortunate reputation.

Minibus of doom!

We boarded a mini bus with some young whipper snappers and set off on our journey through the mountains down to Vang Vieng. We found ourselves being driven down a building site which was a new road that was still being built by the looks of things.  There was a digger throwing sand directly into the road ahead and  a drop on one side of the road with no barrier.  The barrier actually had to time the sand falling and drive through super fast.  Umm - Red Flag.  It was definitely tricky and I did wonder why we were using the road when it was clearly under construction.

Our views from the car whilst we were being driven by our
maniac driver.

Our driver was a complete maniac but then all drivers in Asia have a touch of crazy about them so it's nothing particularly new. At the end of the road after managing to avoid a mudslide and getting stuck in sinking sand we made it through and found ourselves being waved down by some police.  Instead of stopping our driver decided to floor it down the road. No one said anything but we were all thinking the same thing - WTF!.Some poor Japanese girl asked if she could use the loo and the swift response was 'No - we just go a little bit further'.  Red Flag!

Eventually we hit another police check point and were surprise, surprise stopped and our driver was made to get out of the vehicle and we couldn't get out and it was soooo hot.  The other Japanese tourist on our minibus had to stand by the door because he felt so faint.

Eventually our driver got back in escorted by 2 policemen and we were made to drive back in the direction we had come for about an hour to get to a police station.

The driver was on the phone the whole way shouting and driving.  Clearly the police are  lax about driving whilst talking on the phone... Meanwhile everyone was trying to hide what money they had on the sly because you hear of people being bribed all the time.  Luckily when we reached our destination they were just interested in the car and the driver.

A new minibus pulled up and off we went with a more sensible driver.

We made it to Vang Vieng a lot later than planned but we made it to our guesthouse.  We chose a guesthouse away from the main strip and  I'm pleased we did that because the scenery around the guesthouse was awesome.  On the minibus some girls were talking about how 3 tourists had died the week before so a lot of bars had been shut down as a result.



The main thing that Vang Vieng is known for is tubing.  You sit in a rubber ring and float down the Mekong and people cast lines and pull you to shore and you can do shots, do mushrooms, whatever you want to do basically.  I think the girl that died the week before had eaten mushroom pizza aka Happy Pizza and it kicked in only after she got in the water and she unfortunately drowned.


When we went out walking we found it to be quite a sedate place I guess.  The bars along the roads were open playing reruns of Friends and Family Guy whilst tourists sat around and sipped Beer Lao.  There weren't any tourists throwing up all over their feet as The Guardian had promised.  Nor did I see any boobs or white butts. We we did go tubing because aside from getting high on mushrooms and various opiates there is some awesome scenery along the route.  I found it quite fun floating down. There were only a couple of places open along the route so we did it in record time. Rock n Roll! There are a couple of rapids along the way which added a bit of drama but that was just about it for us.  We went and saw a couple of caves and the blue lagoon which was a bit disappointing as it wasn't as amazing as it had been hyped to be.  The caves were pretty cool though.  They weren't that easy to navigate through so it all felt very real.  No hand-holding like Wookey Hole I hear.We ended up staying for just over a week in the end but decided to leave.

Relaxation at a bar along the Mekong.  You could see people floating down the river on rubber rings.

 1st Bike Ride to find the Blue Lagoon.  This ended in complete failure and tears due to inability to cycle.

Some nice scenery though...

2nd attempt to get to the Blue Lagoon.  I'm cycling - yeay!  With some scary cows - not so yeay






















We climbed up this to see another cave.  This was quite scary and every so often a weird insect that looked like a floating dandelion would come past your face.

Scared the bejesus out of me.

Good experience though.

Yeay for the not so Blue Lagoon.  Not quite what I pictured.

Caving Again!

Well kind of....

We climbed a large amount of steps and walked around this cave near our guesthouse.

View from cave opening 

After our descent from the cave I was sweating so much that I dived into this tiny lagoon at the foot of the mountain.  It felt so good and little fish kept nipping at me.  Guess they felt that I needed some exfoliation.

We were going to stop in the capital, Vientiane but decided against that due to bitey dogs and the overpriced accommodation we'd heard about.  We powered on through to the 4 Thousand islands which are in the far South of Laos.  They are a group of islands in the middle of the Mekong River that were supposedly a must see before you go over the border.


A overnight bus trip later we'd arrived in Pakse which we were going to stay in for a couple of days but it just wasn't  that nice so we went to the 4 Thousand Islands.