Detox needed after this little jaunt...

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  Vang Vieng, Lao Peoples Dem Rep
Wednesday, March 9, 2005

We left early the next day for the travellers' paradise of Vang Vieng, a small town that has sprung up in the middle of nowhere specifically for tourists. It features a bus depot that is also the local landing strip, lots of restaurants and bars, all playing endlessly cycled 'Friends' episode DVDs, and plenty of diversions, both healthy and unhealthy. You can go biking, caving and kayaking, or you can smoke and drink your way to oblivion. And don't confuse the 'happy' shakes of Vang Vieng with the 'happy' pizzas of Phnom Penh. Happiness in Laos is a mushroom, not weed.
The trip up there was fun, because though we booked an expensive ($4) aircon bus up there, we were dropped off at the wrong bus stop and had to catch a public bus instead. The Lao boy next to me spoke great English and had evidently decided to practice on me. This is cool, cause it happens a lot around here. English is the linga franca now (ha ha to the French) and everyone wants to practice

A traditional Lao village

. Monks have the best education and so are the best conversationalists (you can get past "where are you from? I am from Laos"). Kids are the funniest, with their "hello, where you from?" and running away before you can answer.
The early bus trip consisted of the Lao guy trying his English, and then, seeming satisfied, leaving me to my gawking out the window. Later though, he decided that he'd try and hook me up with the girl sitting in front of him. Apparently he didn't even know her, but thought he'd be a selfless Buddhist and make us a happy couple. I tried desperately to not embarrass her too much when I declined, but I failed. My diplomatic abilities were not aided by being stuck in a bus again so soon after our traumatic border crossing.
The afternoon of the day we arrived, we hired bicycles (girly ones, with baskets) and thrashed them as hard as we could over the rice paddies to some caves in the area. Once again, Laos stunned us with its beauty. The country out here is unspoiled and the tourists only just starting to discover it. Give it 10-20 years and it'll be stuffed like Thailand, so get over here asap!
Our guide, a local boy, showed us some shallow limestone caves and we ooh-ed and aah-ed properly. Then he suggested exploring one with an underground lake which you can swim in. Since the other caves had been so simple and the boy was a pushy little bugger for tips, I decided to simply hire a lamp and go myself

Biking around the Mekong

. Joe decided to wait outside, so off I went. To my surprise, though there were no turnoffs, the cave passage went quite deep, and small cave opened on small cave. I had been going for about 10 minutes when my lamp went out. Bummer. Stuck on some rickety bamboo steps under a mountain in pitch black. I wondered how long Joe would take to come looking for me. I thought that him deciding to simply head to a bar if I took too long was a distinct possibility. So, I decided to head back. "Dumb! Stupid!", I hear you say. "Shut up", I reply, "how would you feel?" Exactly. So I moved slowly back, thinking that I could at least remember what the immediate path was like. It turned out that I couldn't, but I felt my way back slowly anyway. I realised that my watch had a light function. That just served to make the thirty cm radius that it lit really spooky.
So anyway, I reached the entrance of the cave, a little dirty but unharmed, and feeling frustrated because I couldn't exactly take out my anger about the torch on the 10 year olds renting them out. That night I got drunk. Not that unusual, just assume it happens every night. It'll save me from writing about it everytime, and my mother will be able to go on pretending that i'll still have a liver and kidneys when I get home.
The next day we set out for the greatest idea in Laos. Tubing. This involves being driven upstream and then sitting in an inflated truck innertube as you float down the river back towards town. There are bars along the sides of the river (and in the centre), and they'll sell you a 700ml Beer Lao or a joint for $1. This is a rip-off, but it's worth it. By the way, Beer Lao is possibly the greatest beer in the world. I drank it! (ok, to those of you who don't know me, not such a big deal, but to those who do: remember to start breathing again now). It's supposed to take about 3 hours to float the 3 miles of the river, but we met up with Don, one of the Americans we crossed the border with, and Beck, Lorna and Danni, three English girls we'd met in Phnom Penh and run into again. Floating together down the river, with frequent bar stops, we didn't even get half way in five hours and had to taxi home. Vang Vieng is awesome.

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Born to be wild	Riding through the rice fields	Sunset over the mekong	Toll collectors

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