Laos: Vang Vieng

  Vang Vieng, Lao Peoples Dem Rep
Tuesday, May 8, 2007

Well we got our VIP bus, I use VIP loosely as I still can't figure out exactly what part of this bus was VIP. Looking at it you had a 15 to 20 year old bus, with no or limited air con, small windows that opened to let in a bit of air and the bags were tied to the roof.

02. The mountains around the town

Plus there were parts were it would have been faster walking as it wasn't very good at handling hills. Having said all that I did manage to get a bit of sleep and when I was awake I was treated to some amazing views of the mountain roads we were weaving our way through.

Again we found ourselves a nice place to rest our weary heads and went out for a quick look around. Vang Vieng is a small town with one main road running down the center of town. However what makes Vang Vieng so popular is the scenery all around. The town is surrounded by high hill and mountains that seem to go straight up into the air. There are a plethora of caves and local villages to visit along with rivers, streams and lagoons to jump into to cool yourself off.

20. Kids playing in the river

This was also a joyous occasion as we got to meet Eugene, a friend of Di's from back home. He traveled with us for a week or so before the two of em high tailed off to India for a few months.

So on the first day we hired a few bike and cycled the 13km off to see a few caves. We were all excited about the whole thing, unfortunately Di has no idea how far a km is and was none too impressed when she realised how far it actually was to cycle, and was even less impressed when she realised she had to cycle it back as well. However she got over it for the timebeint and we went to see 3 caves. The last one been a water cave that we could use tubes to travel in along. For some reason the butterflies seemed to like me and kept landing on my head and legs etc.

The next day Eugene had arrived and we hired ourselves a guide to take us to some local villages and then in the afternoon to do a bit of tubing. We got to see a Hmong village and school. The Hmong are a hill tribe people who speak their own language and practice Animism, which is the belief that objects like trees, fields, rock etc contain spiritual entities and some  have supernatural powers. So all around these villages are what look like bird houses with lumps of rice and food in them.

12. Di and Me trying to look adventurous

Apparently if they want to plough a field and therefore disturb the spirit they have to provide a place for the spirit that is better than the original so that it won't be upset and turn against the villagers.

The government has been taking the Hmong and other minorities out of the hill and moving them to the flatland where they have homes and schools to go to. According to our guide this was done not only to protect the forest and wildlife in the hills but also to give the kids an education.

After all the walking Boon our guide cooked us a fine BBQ before we set down the river on our tubes. Tubing is where you rent yourself an inflated tractor tube and float 4km down the river.

34. What do they say bout playing with plastic bag

Along the way there are numerous bars set up along the banks who throw you a line and drag you in so you may wet your whistle. These guys have also put some bloody big swings in place, the starting point been something like 10-15 meters up in a tree and the finish point in the middle of the river. Of course been an adventurous type I had to give it a go first. The perfect jump is to swing off and get to the highest point and just as its starting to go back let go and land feet first into the water. Yeah... that didn't quiet happen for me and I managed to do a massive belly flop. Now from that height you make quite a splash and for the next week I could feel the effects of it. I gave Di my camera to catch the action, but she managed to miss the whole lot of it. I still added it though as the sounds

63. My jump, just listen to the reactions, ouchh

of the crowd looking on as well as Minis laughing was good enough to get the picture across. I also added a video of how it should be done.

The next few days were spent kayaking down the river, again pulling into the bars as we got near the end and renting motorbike to have a look around the countryside before getting our bus tickets to Luang Prabang.

62. Having a beer at the bar