The Rainy Village

We took a VIP bus 6 hours to Vang Vieng on route 13 which used to be quite dangerous up until recently because Hmong rebels used to rob or destroy buses passing along. It's also the kind of road that has frequent landslides in rainy season (oh hang on..that's now!) We made it fine although a few landslides slowed us down and the drive was gorgeous. Once again windy and mountainous, but the limestone mountains that we keep seeing are just so much more beautiful. Vang Vieng is a 2 street 'village' on the river with pretty views and not much to do unless you want to eat off the 'happy' menu (ie weed pizza, mushroom shake), watch endless re-runs of friends or go tubing down the river. We stayed in a bungalow on the river that leaked everytime it rained which was most of the time. I was really sad that I didn't get to take any photos as the mountains were mostly cloud covered. We went tubing on our second day with 2 Aussies we'd met on the boat to Laos. Basically you float down the river in big ole tractor tyre tubes and there are 5 odd riverside bars you can stop at and have beer lao and play on a rope swing or flying fox (zip line). The people in these bars make sure you make it in to their bar by holding out long bamboo sticks for you to grab hold of. There didn't seem to be too many people floating on this day until we got to the last bar where everyone was listing to dance music, standing around and watching the boys get pulled up high on a rope swing with a chair. As the day got darker we swam to a bank somewhere and walked through a construction site and to the street to return our tubes. We would have stayed longer to explore all the surrounding caves if the weather had have been better, but we decided to head South to the capital.

1 Floating

2 Riverside Bar

3 Ben on The Rope Swing

4 Beautiful Mountain Sunset

5 Laotion Fishing

6 Obvious Sign

7 Happy Menu

8 Dinner, Beer & a Movie