The next stop in Laos on every backpacker's itinerary seems to be Vang Vieng. We hadn't originally planned to visit there as we thought it might just be a bit of a party town, but were pursuaded by some other travellers' accounts. Unfortunately our original instincts were correct.
The surroundings were attractive, with some impressive caves (and some not so impressive) but the actual town was full of bars playing endless repeats of 'Friends' and bad music. The main attraction, jusding by all the 'In the tubing' T-shirts we have seen on other travellers, is floating down the Namsong river in a big inflatable ring, past riverside bars which pull you in. It sounds fun so we paid our money, got in our tuk tuk, and headed to the river drop off point with our rings.
It was about 3pm when we started which was a bit too late and the sun was already beginning to lose it's heat. It didn't take long before the cold of having your bottom in icy cold water set in. Also we had thought the whole thing would be quite relaxing: mainly floating with a few casual drinks, and hadn't realised that it was ALL about the bars and was just a different way to do a pub crawl. We got out at one bar and the rope swing there nearly wrenched Ben's arms off (was quite funny when he flipped into the water though) and I got very winded and ended up with my swimming costume in places it shouldn't be. Then we floated past platforms full of 18 year olds with plastic buckets of booze, dancing to Lionel Richie, having written all over each other in marker pen. At the last bar we got off and drank a couple of beers, watching said young folk dancing round a fire to a Dirty Dancing mega-mix and felt very old, and very cold...
We left Vang Vieng bright and early the next day. There isn't a great deal to be siad for our next destination, Vientiane, the capitol of Laos. Difficult to find a room and not a lot to see, the two days we spent there were more than enough. We left Laos feeling a bit as if there were probably some really great areas to explore but, other than Luang Prabang, we hadn't found them on this trip.
