Vang Vieng is unique. It’s possibly the weirdest place on earth.
We arrived at about 4pm on the Wednesday - after a stunningly beautiful journey, arriving in Vang Vieng was a bit of a shock.
Cos it reminded me of Blackpool.
On this trip, we’d met very few British people - loads of Aussies, Americans, Irish and every other nation, but relatively few of our own countrymen, until we got to Vang Vieng.
Imagine the scene - Pete & I have arrived, checked into a pretty nice guesthouse, and set out for a bit of an explore. We stopped for a middle class drink (to go with his middle-class wheat allergy) at the Mulberry Farm Organic Café. All very civilised. As Pete’s sipping on his (Organic) Mulberry tea, two absolutely hammered blokes with dreadlocks went steaming down the other side of the road, covered in mud, missing flip-flops & t-shirts, one of them roaring in either agony or ecstasy (I couldn’t work out which) and then both fell over each other as they tried to get into their guesthouse.
And no, it wasn’t Ben & Ollie.
I was pretty sure I was going to hate Vang Vieng, and was absolutely sure Pete would, I’d been fully prepared to be a sanctimonious cow about the place, but we ended up having a brilliant time.
Let me tell you more about it.
Vang Vieng used to be a beauty spot, rarely frequented, with the primary attraction being the beautiful Nam Song river and the surrounding limestone karsts. Lonely Planet then discovered it, and the crowds started coming. One or two smart locals started hiring out tractor inner tubes for tourists to float down the river, then some other locals decided to set up a bar or two along the river. The bars multiplied, to today’s 7 or 8, and then each bar had to come up with its own USP - sometimes a zip wire, sometimes a swing, one bar has a slide, and another has a mud pit.
Now, about 400 people a day float down the river in an inner tube, from bar to bar, playing on the swings, and getting absolutely hammered. The river closes down about 6pm, there’s a couple of hours for a power nap, then the bars on the island in Vang Vieng centre get going.
Before we hit the river, on our first night Pete & I decided to go out for a few gentle beers. Unfortunately I’d forgotten the terrible effect Beer Lao had on me, and got absolutely wasted (put it this way, I stopped drinking at midnight, went to sleep at 3, and was still drunk at 8. That is not NORMAL for me - proof positive it was poisonous)
I’d decided to leave Ben & Ollie some male bonding time, figuring that I’d bump into them over the course of the few days in Laos, but we missed them the first night, instead making lots of new friends - the girls from South Africa who’d been on our minibus from Luang Prabang, Taryn from Scotland who we adopted as a sister, a guy from Southampton we chatted to loads and never knew his name. I then spotted some Irish guys Rox & I had met in Nha Trang, and somehow Pete got involved in singing round the campfire with some other Irish people (I have a dim recollection of Pete starting it too, saying ‘all Irish people do singalongs round the fire’)
We eventually staggered home at 3am after a great first night.
Next morning was a bit of a write off - I had Beer Lao poisoning and was still drunk, Pete had a combination of raging hangover and wheat allergy effects. What a healthy pair.
We managed to head onto the river at about 3.30pm - pretty much the last there. We bumped into Ben & Ollie at the second bar and had a joyful reunion - we were all feeling a little emotional about having been apart. Ollie’s first words were ‘You’re going to be so disappointed in me, tubing is the best thing I’ve EVER done’. And this was before the mud pit and Swedish girls in bikinis. Imagine that.
We hung out with the boys for a while, but Pete & I weren’t on top form after the previous night, so we decided to save ourselves for the next day, when we promised ourselves a full day on the river. We hit the bar on the island again, meeting up with a very upbeat and affectionate Ollie for most of the evening.
Next day dawned - our tubing day!
But hang on - what’s that noise? Surely it couldn’t be……..
RAIN
:-o
First I’d seen since leaving Thailand, and it had to be on the tubing day. It cleared up around 11am, but it was still dull and overcast, but still obviously warm. We headed out to collect our tubes - today I was number 17, yesterday I’d been 304. On the tuk tuk to the tubing point we met 3 Australians - Bec, Jen & John, and 4 Norweigans - Inge, Oystein, Marius & Morten. We resolved that as there were so few of us, we’d all hang out together.
At the first bar, we were joined by three Argentinians - Steffi, Johanna and Damien, and two more Australians - Lachlan and Jesse.
We all hung out together for the day, and it was absolutely brilliant - it was so great to have a big group of us, all going from bar to bar. It was the best day on the river I had - having a few drinks and laughs, having a brilliant time in the mud pit. By the end of the day, we decided that we’d float all the way down the river, thinking that it would only take about an hour. We even stopped at the final bar on the river for an emergency loo stop and an extra beer.
As we all floated down the river, night began to fall pretty rapidly, and soon we were floating in complete darkness. We decided to try and make landfall, and most of us managed it, but we lost a few of the others who continued floating down the river (one of whom was my brother).
We staggered ashore with our tubes, and scrambled up to the main road. After the failure of some hard negotiations with a tuk tuk driver, we figured we had a long walk back to the town (note to self: don’t go too hard in negotiating when you don’t hold any of the cards). The eight or so of us managed to hitch a ride on a pick up truck, arranging to reconvene about half an hour later for dinner and more partying
We all met up again in the evening - it was great to know so many people on a night out - it was kind of like being at home, where you knew loads of people around - not only those from the day on the river, but those we’d met on other nights out. Brilliant day and night. I retired gracefully at about 1.30, leaving Ollie & Pete to cause chaos (‘Some of my best friends are Christian’ and other such beautiful moments) until 3.30am
The following day, Pete & I had rashly decided to book ourselves onto a mountain trek in an effort to see a little more of the surrounding country. We headed off into the countryside, with our first challenge being a very rickety bamboo bridge, with plenty of slats missing. We handled this one pretty confidently, then continued on with our guide. We then trekked through this great cave - we had no torches, just candles. The river flows through here during the wet season, but was non-existent at the moment. We paused for lunch at a cattle station, where our guides rustled up a fantastic lunch - chicken & vegetable kebabs, fried rice and baguette - all cooked on a BBQ. It was fantastic.
After lunch, we trekked up to a waterfall for a quick dip, then had to scramble over the mountain that we’d cut through via the cave earlier. It was on the way down that my foot slipped (due to the previous day’s rain) and I caused myself some serious bruising - I was almost sick from the shock of falling and the pain. I could barely sit down for days and the bruise was MASSIVE.
Ouch.
That night was to be our final in Vang Vieng - the following day we were (literally) shipping out via kayak to the Laotian capital of Vientiane
It was also our last night with Ben - who was heading to Bangkok whilst Ollie and I were heading South, so it felt like a bit of an emotional farewell. After bouncing around to some 90’s club classics on nothing more hardcore than tea, we defied the Laos curfew of midnight, and hung around for the final time. Alas, most of our new friends had already departed, so it wasn’t the crazy last night we’d hoped for.
Despite my reservations, Vang Vieng rocked. I’d expected to find it hideous, and instead it became one of my great travel experiences.
