Shiny, Happy People

Sunset on the Nam Song river
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By Dan

Leaving the monks and classical ambience of Luang Prabang behind, we headed south for Vang Vieng. As usual, there were a variety of transportation choices. Departure time, total travel time, the availability of air conditioning and on-board toilet, and food/drink options, were all among the factors to consider. Ultimately we went for the VIP Luxury Bus. Nothing’s too good for us! Things started out well, as a sort of flight attendant guy handed out bottles of water and little cake treats right as we rolled out of town at 10 am. That was the last we saw of him for about four and a half hours, though, and we started to wonder about our choice. The road was a twisty, curvy, painful experience, going up and over a series of mountain ridges that was each about 3000 feet higher than the intervening valleys. Three hours into it, we all agreed that it was the worst ride that we had been on for our entire trip. Abby put our supply of barf bags to use, and the rest of us seriously considered joining her. We were hungry, nauseous, and bored, since it was too curvy to read and there wasn’t much to look at, other than the mountains. Finally, almost four hours in, we pulled into a truck stop for a buffet lunch of stir fried vegetables and soup. A little food (we also bought sodas, chips and ice creams, which are the basic foods are army runs on) went a long way to improving our morale, and the last hour in the bus went pretty quickly.

Our hotel - Villa Namsong
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Reports had been that Vang Vieng was full of backpackers who did nothing but party hard and watch “Friends” reruns at the many bars in town. However, when we got to our hotel Villa Nam Song, we wondered whether we had come to the wrong town. Villa Nam Song was set in a beautiful garden, looking out on the Nam Song River and, in the distance, beautiful cliffs and jungles. Not a TV in sight, and no drunks. What gives? We spent the remainder of the afternoon patting ourselves on the back for finding a great place in a great location, and had a spectacular meal (included in our internet package) looking out on the river.

Pure craziness....
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The next morning, I got up early and went for a walk to check out more of town. There were indeed lots of guest houses, and plenty of bars that might have been showing “Friends” reruns, but it was all pretty quiet in the morning, and it seemed like a nice town. It suddenly started raining hard, so I got home dripping wet, but, hey, that’s travel in Southeast Asia.

Three of us took a quick trip across the river to see a cave that had some fun stalactites and stalagmites, and various Buddha images. It was all a little surreal, but fun. Then, it was on to the major event of the day, which was tubing on the Nam Song River. We arrived at the tubing outfitter, and suddenly had it confirmed that Vang Vieng was going to live up to its reputation. There was a huge crowd of twenty-something tourists dressed in swim suits, most of whom had big bottles of beer in hand. It is spring time – maybe Ft. Lauderdale and Cancun have become passé for spring break, and now American college kids go to Laos instead.

Tubing on the Nam Song with the partying twentysomethings
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We were issued our big rubber inner tubes, and put in a tuk tuk for the ten minute drive up river, where we were introduced to the river and told to have at it. The water level is very low at this time of year, so the water was moving pretty slowly, and in some places we barely got by in six inches of water. The main action, though, isn’t the floating part – it’s the shoreline entertainment. Within 100 meters of the put in, we came upon the first bar, which was a bamboo platform built right on the water’s edge. Music was blaring from huge speakers, which competed with the different music blaring from three other bars within earshot. There was fierce competition among the various bars, to get people stop and spend time and money. Each bar had one guy standing on the shore with a long bamboo stick tied to a rope. With nice finesse, he would throw the bamboo stick out so that passing tubers could grab it, and be hauled in to shore. And, yes, there was a lot of refreshment. Free whiskey shots, buckets of mixed drinks, various shooters, and the ubiquitous Beer Lao were all flowing very freely. Oh, and let’s not forget the “special” (wink, wink, nudge, nudge) mushroom omelettes for sale at some of the establishments. You know omelettes aren’t just for breakfast any more!

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Loud music, free flowing booze, and babes in bikinis aren’t enough to draw the crowds, though, so these places add to the thrill level by offering physical entertainment. Imagine a rickety, ten meter high platform built on the water’s edge, and a fifteen meter tower nearby to which was attached a long rope. Rope + tower + platform + water = one very big rope swing. Wow. A few places varied things a little by making it a zip-line that shot down towards the water, and came to a shuddering halt somewhere, shaking the rider off and into the water. One would think that the big rope swings, together with cheap booze, a cheering audience, shallow water, and being twenty something, would be a recipe for disaster. I don’t know what the frequency of injuries is, but we did seem to see more people bandaged up in Vang Vieng than anywhere else we’ve been. Coincidence? I don’t think so.

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Having taken a first shot at Bad Parents of the Year Award for 2008 with the Gibbon Experience zip-lines a few days earlier, Christina and I figured we’d cement our chances by letting the kids do some big rope swinging. Of course, we needed a guinea pig, so I made a point of going first on each rope swing we tried. Some of the places had signs that would point out where the rocks and shallow water were, and actually I think it was all probably pretty safe. I will say that we had a lot of fun – how many places can you go on a giant rope swing 8 or 10 meters in the air, and drop off into a river? Very cool.

The afternoon went very pleasantly, as we floated down river (we decided that it was sort of like floating down the Truckee River from Tahoe City, but on steroids) and stopped from time to time to test a new rope swing (not at all like the Truckee). The music ranged from very good to very bad, but the scenery was fun. Christina and I chatted a little about how the kids have had the chance to see young adults in their element more on this trip than in their rest of their lives up to this point – I’m not sure what the kids think of the whole thing, but they seem more or less to take it in stride, along with everything else they see and experience.

The last stretch of the river was particularly flat and slow, and things started to get a little dark, so we were all ready to be out of the river by the time we got to town. There were no signs or anything indicating where we were, and where the tubing outfitter was, so we sort of guessed, but ended up right back where we wanted to be. The water in the river was a little suspect, so we all took very thorough showers (Abby reported washing her hair two times and soaping up three times), but it was a very fun day on the river in Vang Vieng. We’d all definitely go back.