Vang Vieng. Where safety comes to die. More on that later.
6.30am start. Again, getting more painful everyday. We all packed our bags and were in the bus at 7.30am for our long trip to the next place. Seven and a half hours in a bus, basically.
The fist half was a really miserable trip. The road was so windy and in really bad condition – potholes, cows, even landslides blocking the way. The green mountains and scenery were lovely but most of us just glanced briefly at them before retuning to our internal battles with our stomachs.The roads meant reading, sleeping or writing on laptops were near impossible. Car sickness at its worse.
Lunch was a much welcomed break – food on top of a mountain with a lovely view. I didn’t really like my sweet and sour chicken but managed to scavenge enough of other people’s meals to be nice and satisfied. The toilet also made everything better.Three things that are amazing in Asia: 1. a refreshing shower 2. air conditioning 3. toilets that aren’t holes in the ground.
The second half of the trip was much more pleasant. I even enjoyed the scenery a little bit and managed somehow to sleep. At around 3pm we arrived in Vang Vieng.
This place fascinates me. Laos is such a sleepy cultured country, yet this place is a backpacker haven (I have seen way more white people than Asians here). All the guide books ask you to dress respectfully (i.e shoulders and knees covered), but yet throngs of tourists walk around in just bikinis. There is only one reason for this – tubing.
We arrived at our hotel, settled in and then decided to check out these tubing bars. To explain tubing: basically there are around ten to twelve bars positioned along the Song river. You get into a tube, float down the river, signal to the bars and they pull you in for a drink. The energy in this place is nuts. Sooo many drunken young people, mud wrestling, playing soccer, drinking buckets of alcohol, dancing, jumping off trees into the river, tubing down the river with five or more people to a tube meant for one…. party central in a way I’ve never seen before.
There is a controversy around this attraction… most of the locals warn against it, Gap tours refuse to recommend it and the government recently got rid of some of their rope swings after three people died last month. There is no wonder why it is considered dangerous – tubing + watersports = recipe for disaster. We saw a couple of people decide to swim down the river instead of use a tube, as well as some very passed out looking people floating aimlessly along. That being said, this is THE reason people come to this city.
There was much debate amongst us all whether we would do it or not. In the end, five people are spending the day tubing tomorrow. I’m part of the group trying to fit in a couple of activities first before heading down to the river.
After checking out the crazy tubing scene we all headed out for dinner in a nice air conditioned restaurant. After dinner everybody went home, except for Andy, Paul, Kelly and I as usual. We headed to a place called the Q bar, again backpacker central. This was a pretty cool place, with black lights and everybody painting each other with fluorescent paint. I managed to get a blob on my forehead. I also managed to buy a whole bucket of gin and tonic. Wow did that make me tipsy.
We were right next to a place that sold ‘super high pizzas extra strong’. The “magic menus” are pretty common here, as is robbery and all kinds of things. Did I mention crazy place? I chatted to a guy at the club who quite happily told me about the the magic mushroom pizza he’d recently consumed, hmmm.
At around 10pm we DID think about going to one of the TV bars here. They are so funny – just tables and couches set up around television. You have two choices – a Family Guy bar or a Friends bar. The bars are all really full – I guess its the other thing to do besides drinking and tubing. But no, we headed home for a relatively early night. Big day tomorrow!
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