I knew from the beginning I shouldn't go near the party capital of Laos but I had met such a great bunch of people in Luang Prabang that is seemed rude not to. So off I set on a minibus to Vang Vieng. The bus journey was a bit of a nightmare as my bus was full of Israelis shouting and singing whatever songs Israelis sing. Eventually another bus passed us with only 2 people on board and the kind driver allowed me to switch bus. However, the 2 people didn't last too long as other buses progressively broke down ours filled up to way more than capacity.
Vang Vieng is all about tubing. The tubing experience is almost impossible to explain in words or pictures (made doubly difficult by the fact I never took my camera with me as was too scared t get it wet) to be honest. You basically have a rubber inner tube that you hire in the town and then get a tuk tuk a few km up river and float downstream to the town. The fact that none of us never actually made it back down to the town results from the plethora of bars on route. Each of the bars tends to be equipped with some kind of swinging apparatus that takes you into the water. The swings are brilliant although you have to be careful which ones you go on as during our days tubing we saw at least 3 pretty serious accidents from one particular swing including a broken neck. On day one Dave (see below) and myself decided that one small bar had no customers so we decided to g over and check it out; in the end we ended up working there pulling people in from the river (Dave was the bottle expert throwing a water filled bottle with a rope to pull in people and I had a bamboo pole to pull people in). Within an hour each day we worked there (4 in total) we had filled the place with 50 or so customers while all the other bars in the area which had swings etc were totally empty. We were paid by Airey the owner in free drinks. The best bit about Spider Bar was the amount of people we met; in fact we met so many people that it became pretty hard recognising people about the town later in the day. As we kept telling people out bar was all about people and not about swings or toilets or such things. By about 3 pm there were no more customers and we would jump back onto our tubes and go down river to the main set of bars. Those bars were just mayhem with really big swings, volleyball, buckets of mud for people to cover themselves etc. Its had to explain how much fun the whole thing was. But Vang Vieng for me was all about the people, here are a few:
Dave: 24 year old Londoner whom I first met trying to sell him a boat in Nong Koi but we really hit it off in Vang Vieng. We had exactly the same humor and could just laugh at anything. Within 2 days people thought we'd been mates together for years.
German: Black German guy called Alex who started off quite normal until Dave and myself had built his confidence up so much that he thought he was god. He was one of the coolest people I have ever met. His best moment was when we were sitting in the town and he just flew past us in a kayak smiling and paddling like there was no tomorrow. German was last seen in Vientiane where he had just had a digger reverse over his hired motorbike and was this facing a $2500 fine.
Karen: Picture perfect little Irish girl. Dave's best friend whom I'm going to marry on the 11th of November 2011 since we were supposed to meet at 11 everyday but never really made it.
Tiffany: Southafrican swinging goddess. Definitely the best jumper on the Vang Vieng river.
Laura and Bianca: South African girls who have been traveling the world now for 2 years. All the South African girls were traveling with Karen and Dave when I met them.
Tintin and Lloyd: English and American blokes who were cycling there way from the Philippines to Vietnam to raise money and awareness for mental health charity (see www.cycleasia.co.uk and www.youtube.com/cycleasia). Top lads. Tintin ended up falling having a pretty serious Vang Vieng romance with Olivia (Bianca's lovely sister).
Rebbecca: Southport girl, made famous by me and Dave shouting 'Rebbecca, don't leave me' as she drifted off down the river. Rebecca's mate Wendy had some of the best dance moves around with her Bendy Wendy routine.
Helen: Also made famous by the calls of 'Helen, don't leave me'. Helen and myself got married on the river one day - actually just an excuse to have a stag do on the river since it seemed the perfect place to have a stag do. I also had a birthday and got married to Natayna on the river as well.
Natanya: Manx girl who lives in Manchester that I had a bit of a thing with for a day or so.
My Girl (actually Margeaux but it sounded like My Girl to Dave): from Canada who was traveling with her friend Sarah and Natanya.
Cookie: The only man to get a maths degree and go into roofing when he was finished. Cookie had to get carried off the river on our 2nd day tubing as his heels had hit the rocks off the swing. He then did a super human feat by coming down a cave with us which was agony on all our feet.
Gord: 48 year old Canadian dude who spent most of his time chasing after Vanessa who had come down from Luang Prabang with us.
And many many other people that are too numerous to mention.
Vang Vang was almost all about tubing for us but there were plenty of other things to do such as climbing, caving , kayaking etc. The advice is not to start the tubing until you have done the other activities as tubing develops into a bit of a loop:
- Me going to Dave's bungalow at 10.30am to wake him and go for breakfast. By 11 or so all the girls would have drifted in to breakfast to.
- Get to the tube shop by about 11.30 and give your false name and address (just in case the tub didn't make it home as it did with me the first two days - the 1st time I lost my temper with the boat that was trying to take us down river as he wouldn't get started to I just jumped over board in darkness with my tube. The others went past me about 20 mins later with Dave pleading to the driver to stop for me and me shouting 'He won't stop cause he's a ****'. Eventually the dark, mosquito tubing experience started to wear off and I decided to wade ashore and walk back - easier said than done, once I had ditched the tube in a garden I had to walk 2 miles down the road in darkness with no shoes on!! The 2nd time I didn't have enough money for the tuk tuk back as Dave had our money so I lay on the floor of someone else's tuk tuk but jumped out just I got back to town, the tube guy rand down the street after me but as I'd had the foresight to rub my tubing number off my hand they had nothing on me).
- Get dropped off at the organic farm and have a mulberry mojito start the day off.
- Drift down to the first bars accompanied by a small child who wanted to paddle for you. At this point Dave and me would go to work in Spider Bar.
- By darkness it was time to leave the last bars and drift 100m down to the bridge where a tuk tuk could take you back to town.
- A quick shower (to get the mud off you from the mud fights) and then rendezvous in Oh La La restaurant for the best burger in town.
- At about 9 head down to Smile or Sunset bar for whatever party was going on that night. This is when me and Dave should have been closing the deal with all the chicks we had met in the day but normally would just lark about having a laugh until it was too late.
- At midnight the Laos curfew would kick in and we'd be off to the secret bar by the airstrip (the airstrip itself was build by the CIA to fly in supplies during the secret was in Laos during the Vietnam days).
- The next day wake up feeling far to sorry for any of the rock climbing or caving etc so spend the day recovering and arranging the next days tubing with everyone (it is impossible to go tubing only once since it takes most of the 1st day to suss out what on earth the sketch actually is with tubing).
And so the loop continues until you reach breaking point and you know it is time to get out of Vang Vieng. For us this was about 8 days equating to 4 tubing days. I kept running into the French people that I had bought the boat with and I think they thought Simon had gone slightly mad as the 2 weeks I spent with them I was in bed by 8pm most nights.
We did manage to go to some caves late one afternoon. They were the longest and best caves that I have ever been in - was like a full underground river system. The whole experience would have been slightly better if they had told us to wear walking shoes as we went in swimming at one point but had to end up walking for ages on really ragged rocks which ripped our feet to shreds. We walked and swam for around 2km deep underground which certainly makes this the deepest cave system that I have even been in.
Other than that Vang Vieng was a nice little town, very westernised. The strange thing about it is that most of the restaurants continuously loop Friends videos and some people just sit chilling in them all day watching Friends!! I am sure the local people here hate the rowdy tourists as there is nothing to this town except parties. We knew it was time to leave Vang Vieng in the end when laura had her purse stolen and then poor little Karen (the girl with the loveliest teeth I have ever seen) fell and smashed her two front teeth in. So all at once we all knew we had to get out of there quickly. As if the heavens supported us as well there was the most amazing storm ever the last night in Vang Vieng, there were shacks blown down everywhere and bits of signs flying down the road. Fortunately my little bamboo bungalow managed to survive OK but not all were so lucky. The worst part for me was walking over the rickety bridge in pitch darkness (as all the power went out for 12 hours as well) and I couldn't see anything at all and the handrail was blown down so I practically had to crawl home!!
Vang Vieng photos.
And so it was time to leave Vang Vieng down to Vientiane on a kayak with Dave, Tiff, Cookie etc...The kayaking to Vientiane was great fun but most of it was actually in Tuk Tuks which did ones bum dexterity no favors at all. In the end we must have kayaked about 10km including 1 patch of really serious rapids which were great fun. We also all jumped into the middle of the rapids and off an extremely high 10m cliff into the water - the guide was trying to talk me into a back flip but I just didn't have the balls for that one (defo going to do a diving course when I get back to Manchester so i can show off next time I come away). After the kayaking the tuk tuk ride to Vientiane was a bit of a nightmare, it was supposed to take 2 hours but in the end took nearer 4 as the driver kept picking up people and then being stopped by the police for having too many people on board. It was quite an amusing cultural experience having this pissed up Laos bloke in our tuk tuk who wouldn't say anything but shout Yes all the time!! We arrived in Vientiane after 8 and just grabbed a pizza and then resolved to leave the next morning as already it was clear to us that there wasn't much to hold us in this town.
Kayaking photos.
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