Sarah & Richard's Travels

To quote all the t-shirts in the shops and the hundreds of travellers we've seen in this part of the world we've been 'In the Tube in Vang Vieng, Laos'.

We took a bus from Luang Prabang to Vang Vieng whic took around 6 hours even though it is only around 250km! The roads are soooo hilly and windy that any travel in northern Laos takes forever - at least this roads were sealed though! And the scenery was stunning - Huge mountains completely covered in greenery as far as the eye could see. We passed by several villages which looked very poor with small wooden and bamboo houses on stilts with rooves made of dried palm tree leaves and another type of leaf. We saw chillies drying on the rooves, a kid having his haircut with comb and scissors on the side of the road and people carrying heavy baskets of wood in a little bamboo basket on thier back, even the little kids had a full basket each much like a girl in the west would copy Mum with a doll, but this was reality for them, hard, heavy work as soon as they can walk almost! The closer we got to Vang Vieng the more prosperous the villages got - both larger in size and with sturdier concrete / brick housing, certianly not like that away from town though. The scenery also changed to more karst formations similar to what we'd seen in southern China around Guilin and Yangshuo.

So the thing to do in Vang Vieng is hire a tube and float down the river, so that's what we did! The whold ride without stopping in the dry season is around 2 hours, but the whole idea is to stop at every bar along the route - yes it's crazy! We got to the launch point and about half the Tuk Tuk got off and went straight to the bar for the first 'bucket'. Hmmmm we thought and took out time sorting our stuff and checking things out. We bought a water (aren't we boring) and jumped into the river(which was a bit cold to start with) and caught the current to the next bar. The first part is filled with them and at each spot someone is trying to 'fish' for you by throwing a catch rope to pull you into the bar. Most bars give you free food or shots or bananas if you buy some kind of alcohol and at some bars you have to ask for a menu with non alcholic options! We opted to share a beer and Richy tried to Lao Lao which almost killed him it was so potent!!! Never again he said and that was it for the rest of the day! Each bar pumps music out and there is some form of activity whether it be a huge slide, a flying fox or some big swing and you're supposed to comeplete the swing challenge or something. Richy went on the flying fox which was pretty cool, but I wasn't game...and neither were a lot of others. Most of the structures look pretty dodgy with rickety platforms and dodgy wires, so that was the last of the swings and flying foxes for us.

We jumped in the tube again and floated down to another place which promised table tennis and a massive slide - oh la la and jumped out (or fell into the water which was pretty deep at this point) and made it onto dry land. We met a Spanish couple there who've been travelling for over a year and were with us in thinking the whole bar thing with stopping at each bar for a bucket seemed totally crazy! So we had a few good games of tale tennis and volleyball and joined them for the rest of the way. We floated for a bit and there were a couple of half decent sets of rapids to run down, but the last part seemed a bit slow, with nowhere to stop (after being inundated with bars at the start) and we were pleased to get to the last rapids which were the best and make it to the bridge. Later on that night around 7.30pm we were still seeing people getting off the tubes in the dark!

There's loads of trekking, rock climbing and caving options around Vang Vieng but we opted to go to Vientiane (the capital) the next day so met up with the Spanish couple Emilio and Laura for dinner that evening at one of the spots of the river. There are loads of awesome bungalows and chill out spots on the river and one guy at another table was playing his guitar which was awesome!