Tubetastic!

Trip Start Sep 12, 2005
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Trip End Aug 15, 2006


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Flag of Lao Peoples Dem Rep  ,
Tuesday, November 15, 2005

Vang Vieng lived up to its reputation! After a few hours on the bus from Vientiane we began to head into some beautiful limestone mountains. Most of the people on the bus began to move to the window with their cameras but there was no need...it was Vang Vieng that we were pulling into. We headed slightly out of town to look for some riverside bungalows which had been recommended to us. The recommendation was right. They were in a beautiful location at the foot of the mountains and on a bend in the river. We knew we'd be here a while. Vang Vieng itself is a tourist setup. The main strip is wall to wall bars and restaurants. When we went for some food we were horrified to see that almost all the restaurants showed friends dvds 24/7.. which is great if your into that sort of thing! Altogether we spent 5 nights in Vang Vieng. It was a hard place to leave. There were plenty of things to keep us busy during the day, and you could drink through the night which is basically what we did! Batman begins
Batman begins
 ! The first night we met up with a few lads from Cork in a bar that pumped out solid 80s music. IT turned into a bit of a session and we ended up in the Island Bar until the wee hours. They should've called it the Irish Bar because out of the 15 people left standing at 6am, 14 were Irish! The next 4 nights were more or less the same but we had some good fun during the days. Something strange came over us 1 day when we decided to hire bikes to see a couple of caves which we 20km away, we forgot that meant that it was 20km back!! It was definitely worth it. We had to tube into a cave with battery packs around us and a torch strapped to our heads. We fed ourselves into a cave with a rope for about 50m and then paddled on for another 1.5km until our guide's torch ran out, and then turned back with 2 torches between 3.!!

The next day we got up early (1pm)and did what Vang Vieng is notorious for, tubing, basically what happens is a tuk-tuk drives you 3km up the river, dumps you there with your tube and you float back with the current in 2 hours. It probably would have went to plain but we shared our tuk-tuk with 3 other Irish lads! There is a bar every 50m and we managed to stop at the 1st 12. A guy wades out into the river and pulls you in with a bamboo rod... and its rude to say no. Each bar has a different jump, swing or slide into the river which are great craic. We kind of lost track of time and before we knew it was dark and we still had another 1.5km to go. The sun sets at about 6 and we had to leave the tubes back by 7 or face a fine. We floated past the town and managed to get a tuk-tuk back by 10..30pm havin stopped off a few more times. "$5 fine or else police!" said the tube man. Too drunk to care we laughed and handed him $1 each and headed off. He seemed happy enough. We leave with some good memories and are looking forward to the next stop.
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