Thavonsouk Vang Vieng

Katie, Arne and I took the bus from Luang Prabang down to Vang Vieng, a town whose sole reason for existence seems to be tubing and excessive drinking and drug-taking. I think the general idea is that if it's all contained within this drugs capital of Laos, tourists will get all their Thailand-inspired urges out of their system here and then behave like normal human beings with some degree of respect for local cultures in the rest of the country. On first impressions I was a bit disturbed by ...

Day 89 - 21/05/08 A travel day, caught a minibus to Vang Vieng which is around 200km south of Luang Prabang. Beautiful scenery as we meandered along the twisty roads through the heavily forested mountains. Staying at the Thavisouk guest house in a nice bungalow on the Nam Xong river which flows straight through the small town. Beautiful location but around a ten minute walk from the shops and restaurants, so I've hired a push bike. It's one of those granny bikes with a basket on the front an...

Vang Vieng is in a beautiful setting, surrounded by karst mountain ranges and with the Nam Song running through. This is a backpacker town and there are GH's everywhere. There are loads of obnoxious farang and it reminded me of Cairns a little bit. That aside, we came here to do tubing and let me say this; it is ****ing awesome. Never before have a seen such madness and fun. We decided to go tubing in the afternoon to make sure the rains didn't come and that there were a decent amount of peop...

Vang Vieng would net you two points if you were playing Scattegories and you had to come up with a "Foreign City" starting with a "v." Other than that, there's not much too much to say about it. It was put on the tourist trail because of its beautiful natural setting. Mountains, rivers, mist, and greenery abound. But unfortunately, I would say these natural blessings have in fact killed Vang Vieng. There are more tourists here than locals. Every store front in town is tourist-oriented. (As I ...

We have survived tubing! yay!

We had a pretty awesome couple of days on the river but are now tubed out and ready to it the islands. 3 days in Vang Vieng was definitely long enough for me. Its a tourist honey pot, just rows of restaurants which show one of 2 programs on repeat: Friends and Family Guy. Most people there are drunk most of the time. We had a particularly special bus journey down to Vientiane to catch our flights, sat behind a "man" who was practically passed out before ge...

Today we went rock climbing in Vang Vieng, what a great day. Small trek and scramble to the start point - through lush green rice fields to these amazing rocks just sprouting up ( the rocks are made from limestone i think and it looks a little similar to Thailand) and the views are just amazing.
To be fair - before i started the climb i was bricking it - as never climbed before - but the adrenaline rush just help me climb - it was a struggle - but so worth it. It felt so good to be out in...

Arrived in Vang Vieng after a 3 hour road trip.
I had completely crashed after the trip and completely out of energy, but we all decided to go and Kayak on the river. This turned out to be a great decision as the endorphins kicked in and it felt so good to be working out. The views from the kayak were stunning - lush green - with huge limestone rock sprouting up from the ground.
During the kayaking we went a shore and jumped off swings into the river ...... i am in my element here. This...