We absolutely loved our time in Vang Vieng. Besides Byron Bay in Australia, it's the longest place we've stayed so far. We're not sure if it's the Friends bars, the Big Beer Laos, or the tubing that keeps people there so long! But it's definitely been one of our favorite places so far.
Our first day in Vang Vieng we hopped on a tuk tuk to check out the Tham Jang cave. It was a bit of a hike up to the entrance of the cave, and we spent awhile walking around inside. Luckily, we made a friend who let us share his flashlight, as our group only had one that burnt out within minutes. After leaving the cave, we were all hot and wanted to go for a swim, so our tuk tuk driver dropped us off at the end of the tubing. We ended up walking to one of the bars along the tubing route, which had a huge waterslide and one of many rope swings into the river. Now, these aren't ordinary rope swings; at the highest point we estimate you're about 10m above the water, and when you finally let go it's about a 5m drop into the river!!! We hung out at the bar for a couple of buckets and few Beer Lao, and hung out with the tubbers from that day. We were able to get pictures of the tubing, as we weren't planning on bringing our cameras.
The next day, we went tubing. How to describe tubing... You start off the day renting a giant black tube, and taking a tuk tuk about a 10 minute drive out of the city. The start of the tubing is the first of many bars on stilts above the water, packed with people, buckets, rope swings, and blasting music. We spent time at the first bar enjoying a few drinks and the guys were brave enough to go off the first rope swing of the day. After awhile at the first bar, you hop on your tubes and float about 2 minutes downstream to the next bar. The whole tubing area is only about 200m in total, filled with all kinds of bars. There was one bar that had a giant tug-o-war over a mud pit, one with a big cliff jump into the water, and many with these crazy rope swings. When we finally made it to the last bar, it was suddenly pitch black and definitely time to head back to town. We were probably the only 2 people whose tubes actually made it back to the tube rental shop to get our deposit back. The idea of it might not sound so logical... but like I said, it's hard to put into words how crazy and fun the experience was!!
The day after tubing, we didn't accomplish much besides sitting and watching Friends, and walking around town. The day after that, we took a tuk tuk out to this "Blue Lagoon" we kept hearing so much about, for an afternoon of swimming. We're not sure what we were expecting but it was a blue... lagoon. We spent a bit of time there before heading back into town. That night, we had a movie and supper and had a last Beer Lao with the boys before leaving Laos. Today, we woke up and caught our bus to the capitol city Vientiane. We said bye to the boys, who are heading back to Canada soon, and wandered around for what seemed like forever before finding a Guesthouse with availability. We've spent the rest of today making plans on how we're getting to Vietnam. Hopefully, we'll have updates on that very soon!!
Cheers,
Kristin and Tanis
