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TRAVEL BLOG ENTRY
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To get to Vientiane, the capital of Laos, we had a quick mini bus journey to the southern town of Pakse where we had a 6 hour stopover and swapped our lovely Aussie friend Julie for the well-spoken English boy Julius, who likes to burst into random raps every now and then!
We arrived in Vientiane Thursday morning after a comfortable 9 hour overnight bus journey. The six of us got a few hours kip, and then true to our form, did no sightseeing of the city! We’d read about a lovely place a few kilometres outside town that does great massages. Its at a temple in a forest, really pretty location. You start off with a herbal sauna, then have a strong Lao man work on your pressure points for an hour! Definitely did the trick, and just seeing the lads dressed up in their Lao sarongs was worth it!
The next day was the celebration of the end of the rainy season, so all the towns on the Mekong have boat races to celebrate. The town was trobbing with people Friday night, so we decided to head out and make a night of it. There was a massive night market down by the Mekong. From there we headed to a local Lao nightclub…funny stuff, we were the only westerners there, and also the only people over 21 I think! Then we went to the only late night niteclub there, which is on the 4th storey of a posh hotel and full of westerners, mostly Irish of course. That turned out to be a late night, and the next morning, only me and Mark (well me really and Mark under much persuasion) were able to make it up to get the 1pm bus to Vang Vieng.
Vang Vieng is the backpacker town in Laos. It looks quite similar to Yangshuo in China, but not quite as spectacular, with karst formation mountains all around. Its famous for the tubing down the Nam Song river. Within 2 hours or arriving there, me and Mark had met up with 6 other people we’d met along our travels, so by the time the rest of our gang made it up on Saturday, there were 12 of us! 12 is a huge number to keep track of over a number of days, and things did get quite complicated, especially when it came to stuff like paying the bill! Saturday the 12 of us started out drinking early…that’s the main activity besides tubing in Vang Vieng, and by the end of the night, I think I was definitely the worst for wear out of the bunch. I think I shocked them a bit, cos up til then I’d been the sensible one (crazy I know!!). The next day, we headed off tubing, me very hungover and dehydrated. Tubing sounds so easy, its just sitting in a tractor tyre floating down a river…how hard can that be?? For most people its not, but for some reason of bad co-ordination, and just me being me, I can’t get the hang of it. Not letting Mark get out of arm’s length of me, we bumped into every rock, tree and sandbank along the river. For the last 5kms of tubing, you start coming across these makeshift bars on the riverside. Unlike Don Det, here they actually pull you in with a rope, so its easy to get up to them. All the bars have these huge big ropes and swings that brave people jump off…great to watch but not to try. We stopped in most bars, and drank the buckets that Vang Vieng is famous for (whiskey, coke and red bull). Not feeling the best from the night before I didn’t overindulge, but that can’t be said for the rest of the group. When we got the last bar, we realised that the dry bag we'd been holding our gear in, wasn't actually dry. My camera and Scottish Ann's camera were the only two valubales really desroyed, and I suppose given all its had to put up with my poor camera did me well over the last year and a half!! It was really dark and cold as we were heading back, and kinda scary, so being a really crap tuber, me and Mark decided it was best to leave the group float down in darkness and hitch a lift back the last 2km on a tuk-tuk.
Being the only one not to be really hungover, I got up early the next day and left the madness of the 12 to go for a day’s caving. There was six of us on the tour, very different type people to the gang I’d been hanging out with up til now. These were people who actually do stuff with their days, real backpackers, who wear hiking boots and camping trousers and carry maglites! We got to go to four caves, and two local villages. The villages weren’t that exciting, and two of the caves were really just shrines to buddha inside a grotto, but the other two caves were really cool. One was huge, and its not lit up at all, so you have to have a torch and really watch your step. You feel like a proper explorer making your way through. You even have to climb up a steep ridge to get in. The other cool one had an underground river which we tubed into. This time I wasn’t too bad at tubing cos we had a rope to hold onto the whole way in. It was great inside, the river went on for ages, and we had head torches on and got to see loads. There was a big lake in the middle where the proper backpackers went for a swim (and I watched!). We had the option of tubing home the last 4km, but given that it was 4pm and almost dark and my previous crapness at tubing I took the tuk-tuk option home.
Its lucky I did, cos when I got back, Mark was definitely worse for wear. Whether it was too much alcohol over a number of days, lack of water (he realised he hadn’t drank any in 2 days), the food or what, I have never seen him so ill! He took to bed for the night, and 4 days later, he’s still not right…and of course being a man, he loves to moan and whing about it!
By the last night, it wasn’t just Mark who was feeling unwell (although he was the worst) everyone was feeling the pull of the last week or so, and I think we all kind of knew it was time to leave the madness behind and the craziness of a group of 12. So the next morning, Mark, Farah, scottish Anne and I headed up to Luang Prabang to detox and do some proper stuff.
They say about Vang Vieng that you either love it or hate it. I think that while you’re there you love it and think it’s the most idyllic place in the world, but when you leave, you look back and think, wow, what the hell was I doing for those four days, and how much more could I have done somewhere else!! That said, it really was one of the most fun places we’ve been!
previous travel blog entry
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