The Backpacker Capital of Laos

Bridge over the river
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After Champasak, we took a number of buses covering over 700km and ended up in Vang Vieng, the backpacker capital of Laos.  Vang Vieng is set on the Mekong and is lined with breathtaking limestone cliffs.  It also is home to a huge backpacker culture, a lot of drinking, drugs and strangely enough: continous Friends* episodes in many of the bars.

The thing to do in Vang Vieng is go tubing.  For the lily-livered, this means you sit in an inner tube and laze down the Mekong (perhaps the world's best Lazy River).  For an added challenge, there are bars approximately every 50 meters serving everything from Beerlao to mushroom shakes - try and stop at as many as possible.  And, for the super-keen there are huge, rickety, swings that you can climb up and swing down into the river.  No, safety is not first here, but it is really, really fun.

Limestone cliffs
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We did manage to somehow spend time neither drinking nor watching Friends.  We went on a hike to some caves (one with a buddha shrine inside), went on a bike ride to a beautiful lagoon and spent time in our beautiful guesthouse garden teeming with butterflies.

There are many mixed reviews about Vang Vieng - some people love the party scene, others can't stand the town.  We really liked being able to party if we wanted and we really enjoyed the nature here.  The beautiful scenery just a 5 minute walk from the town and on our hike & bike ride we only ran into a handful of tourists.

Buddha shrine (the only reason it is lit up is because of the flash - it is PITCH BLACK in the cave)
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* We wasted a couple of hours in one of the Friends bars and managed to catch the Holiday Armadillo episode (best episode of all time)