Dan's Adventure

Vang Vieng is a backpackers mecca in Laos. The town is filled with guest houses, bars and restaurants, many of which show Friends and Family Guy on repeat. These restaurants are invariably filled with people lying spread out on the bed like seating either too hung over or too stoned to move. The locals refer to this area of Vang Vieng as falang town and many have actually relocated a few kilometres along the road. Away from the restaurants with the same same menus, there are some nicer places such as the organic farm’s cafe and a couple of Indian restaurants.

Around Vang Vieng the scenery is fantastic. Limestone formations surround the area, many with deep caves which were once used for shelter during the war and others with underground rivers. It reminded me a lot of Yangshuo in southern China. I went on a kayaking trip which started with visits to a few caves north of Vang Vieng. One required head torches as we climbed inside, clambering over rocks and through mud, being constantly amazed by the stalactites and stalagmites within. At another we jumped into giant rubber tubes as we floated along the underground river inside the cave. Following a spot of lunch we kayaked around 15km back to Vang Vieng.

The kayaking wasn’t tough at all, the water was fairly shallow and was slow moving apart from a couple of small rapids, we actually managed to get stuck on rocks a couple of times as the water became too shallow. As we paddled our way down the river all we could hear was the sound of birds singing in the trees, buffalo splashing in the water and the greetings of the children we passed along the way. That was until we reached the start of the tubing area.

Tubing is the reason most people visit Vang Vieng and to be honest, its one of the reasons I wanted to go there. In a nutshell, you hire a rubber ring and float down the river back to Vang Vieng. The first few kilometres of the river are lined with bars pumping out loud music, offering incredibly cheap buckets of whiskey cocktails and the opportunity to jump off rope swings into the river. I thought it would be a fun way to spend new year. About 2 kilometres away from the bars we could hear the music and it got much louder as we got closer. The bars were heaving with people dancing, bodies were plummeting into the water around us from the rope swings above and people were trying to paddle their tubes along with their sandals whilst clinging to their bucket of booze. It was quite a sight. We stopped at one of the last bars in the first section and looked on with amazement as people continuously jumped from about 10 meters high into 1 meter deep water. That one bar was enough to put me completely off the idea of tubing. I was happy to kayak back to Vang Vieng and appreciate the wonderful scenery whilst slaloming through the tubes that dotted the river.

Mountain biking was also a great way to explore the area around Vang Vieng. I hired a bike for the day and set off across a bamboo bridge, through fields and along dirt roads that went through numerous villages. This was on the 1st of January and one thing that stuck out was how much the Lao people like to party. Even families living in the most basic of houses had at least one huge speaker blasting out music as the entire family sat around sharing a huge meal shouting out happy new year as I cycled by.

I could have spent a lot longer in Vang Vieng, I really wanted to go rock climbing but unfortunately there weren’t any groups signed up whilst I was there and going solo is prohibitively expensive so I passed and decided to move on.