Hi everyone,
Since leaving Luang Prabang, we’ve mainly spent our time floating down a river in tractor inner tubes drinking beer.
Perhaps that needs some explanation…
We left Luang Prabang on Tuesday morning and spent 5 hours on the bus winding through mountainous roads while trying to both take in the amazing scenery and hold in our breakfasts. We just about managed both. We were headed for Vang Vieng which is a small town about halfway between Luang Prabang and Vientiane, the capital city.
views from the Luang Prabang - Vang Vieng road
Vang Vieng is a town squarely aimed at backpackers and if you’re not wearing baggy shorts, an “Ipood*” t-shirt and holding a big bottle of Beerlao then you might feel a bit out of place. So we fitted right in, obviously.
Vang Vieng
(*For those of you who’ve not been backpacking to Thailand or Laos recently, the Ipood t-shirt is one of about 20 t-shirts that are sold everywhere to backpackers on almost every street corner. Most of the t-shirts feature either Che Guevara or beer brands, the Ipood one has the outline of someone sitting on the loo listening to an Ipod. Hilarious, we’re sure you’ll agree. We’ve bought loads for you all when we get back! What do you mean you don’t want one?).
Anyway, Vang Vieng sits on the banks of the Nam Song River and its most popular attraction is tubing. For the uninitiated, this involves renting a tractor inner tube from a shop in the town then getting a tuk tuk ride about 4 miles up river and then jumping in the river and floating slowly down in your tube for 4 or 5 hours back to the town.
Preparing to go tubing having read the full instructions...
But that’s not all. The river has umpteen ramshackle, small wooden bars all along its banks specifically for the benefit of tubers to stop off for, ahem, refreshments.
We made our first stop after about 15 minutes (it was hard work you know) where the barman insisted on giving us both a free shot of Tiger whisky (fermented from rice, mmm) before he’d sell us a Beerlao each. The rascal. We sat dangling our feet in the water for about 10 minutes, then the techno music got too much for us so we decided to take our bottles with us and jumped back in.
The view from the tube and one of the launchers for jumping in the river
another way to get even wetter in Vang Vieng - slide in!
In the end we were quite restrained - we only stopped about 3 more times. Which we think is a fair few less than a guy we met at the finish who said he’d started at 11am with 3 mojito cocktails at the first bar (before he got in the river) and eventually made it back to the town at 6pm.
two Beerlao and a bag of pork scratchings please
The river was full of tubers, though occasionally a small powered longtail boat would breeze past carrying bemused looking older tourists trying to work out what they were witnessing. Towards the end, we also floated past about 10 water buffalo who'd come in the river for a bath - they didn't seem interested in our offer of a swift half though....
Sarah looking erm, relaxed, sharing the river with a herd of water buffalo!
After all that hard work, we needed a day to recover so we spent all of Thursday sat at a riverside bar in the town drinking fruit smoothies, taking in the sun and planning our Vietnam and China routes.
We got the bus to Vientiane on Friday, which was another 5 hours, but with much straighter roads this time, and spent the afternoon having a look round the city. Though it’s actually very small and little bigger than a mid-size town really. It’s also unfortunately lost most of its historical buildings due to various wars so there isn’t a great deal to see. We had a pleasant enough day looking around in the glorious sunshine but decided to book flights from here to Hanoi in Vietnam for Saturday evening.
Sarah in front of Vientiane's answer to the Arc de Triomphe. Apparently it was built from concrete that the US government had donated for building an airport!
Vientiane's presidential palace
By the riverside in Vientiane (Thailand is over on the other side)
We were debating whether to get the bus all the way to Hanoi but it’s supposed to take 24 hours (sometimes more) and we’ve heard quite a few stories that have put us off. One couple we met who’d travelled from Hanoi to Vientiane told us they were packed in on a rickety old bus with no air con and a driver who stopped in the middle of nowhere for a 5 hour sleep because he said he was tired! We’ve read similar tales on the web and the final straw was probably seeing an upturned lorry on our way from Viang Vieng to Vientiane that had come off the road and plunged 30 feet down into a field! So Vietnam Airways it is.
We’ve really enjoyed Laos and it’s definitely confounded some of our expectations, particularly that it’s been much easier to get around than we thought and that the towns and facilities are far from basic. No doubt it would have been a bit different if we’d headed into the north or the countryside but our short stay here has been a breeze and really good fun. The people in Laos are fantastic too. Very cheerful and laidback. This may be another place we come back to one day!
Hope all is well at home. Keep in touch and keep the comments and emails coming. Hope you're not getting bored of us yet!
Love to all.
Phil and Sarah x
