Day 68: Luang Prabang to Vang Vieng
Trip Start
Sep 21, 2006
1
69
228
Trip End
Jun 01, 2007
Vang Vieng,
Lao Peoples Dem Rep
Tuesday, November 28, 2006
Then, I'm squeezed into a minibus for the five-hour drive south to Vang Vieng. At the bus station I'm volunteered as a model for a photo for the company's brochure. The minibus driver's shaven eyebrows have barely grown back so I presume he has only just quit as a monk. The road is (mostly) smooth and winds uphill over 1000m through villages of thatched, bamboo-weave homes. We pass trails of schoolkids waving bamboo stalks as they head to class, and we occasionally slow down to allow goats and pigs to cross. As we enter Vientiane District imposing spires of verdant, limestone peaks rise up around us and continue to Vang Vieng.
Vang Vieng is barely more than a couple of streets by the main road, but it's crammed with backpacker temptations - DVD bars, 'space' pizzas, pool and draught Beer Lao, plus tubing (hiring a tractor inner-tube to sail downriver), caving and kayaking. I am tempted to make the next leg of my journey by kayak to Vientiane.
Along the main drag at night, a generation of backpackers have been lured back to TV. The bars showing 'Friends' are busy, with loungers camped out on bed-seats. One bar promises 'No Friends' just to be different. I end up in a rare no-video bar, but it's notmy kind of thing either. The 'Special Menu' offers bags of weed, mushrooms or opium for 50,000 kip (£3) a pop, or even opium tea. (At the Tubing Rental, they list the fines you might expect from the police should you get caught driving an inner tube under the influence.) Route 13 is the closest I've come in Laos to the licentiousness of Bangkok in Laos. When the obligatory Israeli potheads crawl over to flirt with two Germans I share a table with (as another of their fellows fumbles with a local woman), I take the cue to leave.
