Sabadee. We are loving life in Vang Vieng. It is absolutely beautiful up here in the mountains, with barely any traffic and packed with activities to do.
20 October – continued [Shaun’s post]
We walked for a few hours taking in our surroundings and exploring the village. We ate tea at a restaurant that was serving free whiskey shots but forgot to get our shots, DOH. While eating tea a girl on the table next to us started being sick and then passed out, i helped the girls friend lay the girl onto the floor where after a few minutes she woke and ran to the toilet. Using our Sherlock skills we come to the conclusion they were doing drugs. That night we had a few beerlao and watched a couple of episodes of family guy.
21 October
Today we attempted to go touring on bikes (bicycles I mean, I keep having to talk Shaun out mopeds even if they are only 80p more to hire a day!). After 2 minutes Shaun’s bike was already broken so we took them back to our hotel. We have learnt by now that whenever we hire anything, something always breaks so we gave up. Plus it’s boiling, if you stand outside for even just a minute you are melting.
The whole town also does not have any swimming pools so there is nowhere to relax and cool down. Everyone gets by on bicycles, mopeds and tuk tuk, seeing cars is very rare.
Instead we walked around the town. There is literally nothing else here other than bars and restaurants for travellers and a primary school for local children. But who needs anything else when you have this amazing view of the Nam Song River and mountains.
22 October [Shaun’s post]
The next day we went on a kayaking, tubing and caving tour with a company called KCP, it cost 80,000 kip which converts to about £6.50, this tour is all day and includes lunch - BARGAIN!
We set out at 9am on a home fabricated tuk tuk where they piled 8 kayaks on the roof and 10 people in the back. Our first introduction to the river (the Nam Song) was a shock, it was moving at about 10 knots. We all paddled to the other side of the river where we left the kayaks and walked to our first stop, Elephant Cave. The cave had a huge Buddha at the back of it and various carvings in the stone of elephants. Some of which were so old nobody knew who had carved them.
We then trekked through a small village with wild animals everywhere. Traditional Laos houses are built of bamboo on stilts where the bottom section is for the animals. We arrived at a small lake where we jumped in our tubes, basically an inner tube from a big tractor tyre. We did tubing through the caves, a very surreal experience. We sat in our tubes and followed the guide through caves into very claustrophobic spaces. The tour company had supplied lights which was basically a 12v battery hung around your neck attached to a light tied to your head. Unfortunately they didn’t have enough for everyone so we had no light, but who wants 12v strapped to them while swimming anyway.
We stopped for lunch at the lake side and trekked back to the river. From here we had a 2 hour kayak down river. Half way down one of the kayaks was sinking because it had hit a rock, the tour guides pulled it to shore made a fire, melted a plastic water bottle and job done, fixed. Our next stop was to a riverside bar where I did a huge Tarzan swing into the river.
Our last trip was to the boat racing festival where we watched the sun set as we paddled down river. The festival was happening just outside our hotel, every morning it had been waking us up at about 7 o’clock with Lao music.
That night we decided to make a night of it Lao style. We went to the ‘Island’ where all the partying happens. We walked across a bridge which was about 80 meters long and 12 foot high and made from bamboo which shook as we walked over it. The Island consists of about 4 bars, all having a slightly different theme from the last. We drank buckets all night - basically tell them what cocktail you want and they put it in a bucket, as strong as you like the price is still the same, around £1.50. Which I really don’t mind paying, since each one contains at least half a bottle of Lao whiskey. Lots of flaming limbo and people burning themselves. A 20 minute stagger home saw one of the best night sleeps we’ve had since beginning our trip.
23 October
After a heavy night out we didn’t do anything today. We went and watched Friends in our ‘local’ because they had free wifi.
24 October
We had planned on going tubing today but by the time we were eating breakfast/lunch at 1pm it started raining. This is the first rain we have had since we’ve been here! So we wondered around the town and hung out watching films in our room all day. There isn’t much to do here apart from activities on the river, trekking or cycling.
We had dinner at a restaurant next to our hotel and had a traditional chicken larp/laap, I thought it was disgusting but Shaun quite liked it. It’s basically chicken, beef or pork cut into tiny pieces with beans and mint. They also serve a ‘Special and Happy’ menu here which is basically anything you want with magic mushrooms; I couldn’t imagine anything worse than a mushroom shake. After watching Transformers Revenge of the Fallen and Tomb Raider (for some Cambodia inspiration) we went to bed.
25 October
We finally went tubing today! It was sooooo much fun!! We got a tuk tuk up to the starting point with 8 other people – one had been the day before, and one 5 years ago – so we were all still quite unsure what to expect. Where you get dropped off there are 2 bars, with a slide each and a rope swing on one of them. You can literally (O MY GOD I’VE JUST SEEN MY FIRST COCKROACH IN THE BAR WHERE WE ARE SAT – ERGGGGGGHHHHH!!) anyway, you can literally see the pebbles at the bottom of the river so it was far too sketchy to jump in, although some people did the crazy fools!! Because it’s now the ‘dry’ season the river is shallow, and quite slow, and clean!! Apparently, in the rainy season it can take 1 hour start to finish to the last bar and in the dry 4 hours. I was dreading the state of the river after all the videos on You Tube we had seen of the skanky brown river!
We got in the tractor tyre and floated off down to the next bar!! When we reached the second bar people were already completely smashed!! They give you free Tiger Whiskey (Laos whiskey) or Lao Lao (a home brew)shots and they all have lovely creatures in them, ranging from wasps and giant centipedes to snakes!! It was very amusing watching people jumping off the rope swing and belly flopping, big style, into the river!! Seriously dangerous though when they are completely incapacitated, someone told us that 2 people had already died this month. We saw no accidents at all though so it was a good day!
By time we finished our beer we were the last to leave and there were only 2 tyres left for 6 people waiting so the others coupled up and me and Shaun had to walk to the next bar!! You can easily do this without a ring and save yourself 115,000 kip!! The next bar had a rope swing with the platform built in a tree top!! Here you can double up swinging!
Shaun jumped off at the next bar, and did his Guernsey stamp on the river, the infamous bomb shells!! From here we went to the bar where we went on our kayaking trip and met some GUERNSEY PEOPLE!!!!! We were only saying the other day we wonder where we would meet our first Guerns!! There was a random Lichtenstein guy asking where everyone was from at the bar and this guy said Guernsey!! We were like ‘no you’re lying you just heard us say that!!’, turns out he actually was!!! They are a couple called Simon (he’s a rugby captain) and Sophie (she worked at the post office), no idea of their last names!! Shaun thought he recognised the guy earlier on but I didn’t believe him!! We ended up leaving with them and a group of people they had met and went off down the river in search of the last bar, Bucket Bar. After about an hour in the river, the sun had set and it was pitch black, we gave up and got a tuk tuk back!! It was a really amazing thing to do, so surreal in the beautiful mountainous setting and also an amazing sunset viewpoint from the river!!
This evening we are sitting in a restaurant called Sakura watching The Book of Eli!! Tomorrow we are going to get either a VIP bus or a mini van up to Luang Prabang.
26 October
Last night there was a HUGE thunder storm!! The rain started lashing down at about 4am then the loudest thunder ever came at about 5. I mean THE LOUDEST!! It woke me up because I thought a bomb had it!! It shook everything in the room and rumbled on for about a minute!! This continued for about an hour in between strikes of blinding lightening!! It was quite scary!!!
When our alarm went off at 7am we decided against getting the bus out of here today since the roads are part mud track we dread to think what they are like now!!! Hopefully going to leave tomorrow instead, we are definitely ready to get out of here now!!!
Haven’t done much else this afternoon. We are now sat in a little restaurant, which doesn’t have any chicken so we have to have beef (hopefully it is beef!!).
We have booked a mini van to Luang Prabang for tomorrow morning!!
A la perchoine, Jodie & Shaun x
