Vang Vieng
Trip Start
Oct 09, 2007
1
77
98
Trip End
Ongoing
Vang Vieng,
Lao Peoples Dem Rep
Friday, February 29, 2008
There is one main street (where our guesthouse was), which parallels the river just about one blocks distance away. When at the river, there are many rickety bridges to cross to get to an island which is known for cheap thatch bungalows and many outdoor bars, each with many hammocks to lay around on and each with at least one bonfire to warm up to, in the evenings (it gets quite chilly near the river at night).
Its a lazy place, whose main attraction is "TUBING". Vang Vieng has made tubing their main commodity (besides the beautiful scenery)
relaxing in one of the 100's of hammocks
. What it is, is they rent tubes for you to float down the sleepy river for about 2+ kilometers. Along the banks of the river, the locals have made bars that entice you to stop, by providing wicked rope swings, ziplines, and trapeze swings to jump off of. ( There will be another blog for this, when we experience it!) People come here for a few days and some end up staying for weeks!Mathew and I had found that the place was very easy going, the food was good, and the river pretty to relax near. We spent every day fitting into a hammock along the river and walking around. Tom, our travel companion had left us at this point, for he went north to explore the lesser traveled paths of Laos. But, the friends we met through him, Yolanda, Dan, Sonja, Sasha and Andrea continued on with us to this river town (on seperate days, but we ended up finding each other and hanging out).
On this blog we have pictures of the Wat hosting a festival. It was funny because there were games (like throwing darts at baloons) and if you won, the prize was a wine cooler! At the Wat, the locals would donate money to the monks, and the monks would tell them there fortunes. Above the monks, in the Wat itself, were children pointing toy guns at everyone (creepy). Anyways, this is just an intro to Vang Vieng. The beautiful pictures and the adventures we had here will be in the next blogs. Enjoy!
