The Slitherants: Laos, Vang Vieng

Vang Vieng…This place is, for many people, a big part of the reason why they come to Laos in the first place. We had heard mixed reports from people we had met, some who described it as a beautiful spot, others who thought that it was just one long backpacker grovel where people go to get messed up and hooked up. The truth, in my opinion, lies somewhere in between. As always it’s better to just go see a place for yourself rather than listen to other people opinions so off we went. My my. The first thing I found myself uttering to Kate once we got off the bus and began our usual ‘walk of shame’ to find somewhere to stay was ‘Damn, when did we get so old?’. The average age of the punters seemed to be about 18-21 and for the girls fake Ray-Bans, bikinis and big hair certainly seemed to be the in look for tubing this season. For blokes it was, of course, just boardies. As you walk along the main streets of this small, otherwise unassuming town, the restaurants all play endless re-runs of Friends (puke!) and Family Guy (well, at least that’s better).

We quickly found a dirt-cheap room in a pretty ordinary guesthouse and had a bit of a look around. The town really is in a beautiful spot. The river flows alongside the main town with giant Karst cliffs and mountains looming on the other side of the river. The flipside is the endless bars selling cheap ‘buckets’ of bootleg vodka and whisky. The buckets go hand in hand with the tubing to be had on the river which starts about three km’s from the centre of town. The idea is that you get dropped off at the start point upstream and then trawl your way through the numerous bars on the riverbank before departing completely legless at the end of the day for the one hour float on your tube back into town. But more about the tubing later.

On our first full day in Vang Vieng we decided to hire a motorbike and go check out some of the caves and swimming spots amongst the Karst hills on the other side of the river. This was pretty cool and we found our way to the beginning of a cave where we had to park up the bike and follow a stream up into the hills. A local kid sits there waiting for tourists to roll up, charges them 20 000 kip a head (about $3AUD) to park the bike and then guide you up to the cave. ‘What do we need a guide for?’ I asked myself. I mean how hard can it be to find a cave and then have a bit of a look inside. As it turned out the cave was not just like a bit of an overhang on the side of a hill but a full on pitch black, easy to lose your way in about five seconds type cave. Once inside the boys gave us a torch each and thank God! Even with a torch it was pretty difficult going as everything was completely black, there was water leaking in all over the place and lots of tight squeezes and even a few abyss-like drop offs to negotiate. And once inside what should be there lurking in the darkness?? Why a statue of Buddha of course! What else are you going to build in the depths of a pitch black cave? The local’s dedication to building Buddha’s is truly remarkable and it seems the more dangerous, difficult and far-flung the place to build his statue’s are, the better. At one stage we were led into an inner chamber which, wait for it, was extremely dark! Amazing stuff. After fumbling around in the bowels of this cavern, groveling in the mud and looking at the walls of dark rooms we emerged into the light only to be hit up again for more money by our trusty guide. Oh well, if it wasn’t for him I’d still probably be staggering around in the darkest nether-regions of this cave imploring Buddha, or anyone else, to help me find a way out. So the lucky blighter earned himself another $2, seems reasonable to me.

After having a quick dip in the river on our way back to the bike to scrub off the mud we had accumulated, it was off to ‘the Blue Lagoon’. No, not that almost indecent movie from the 80’s that introduced us all to the ‘talents’ of Brook Shields, but rather the Vang Vieng swimming hole of the same name. As there had been some serious monsoon season rain the night before all the rivers were running pretty high to say the least. This is partly why we had opted to delay tubing on the main river for another day and the river at the Blue Lagoon, albeit just a tributary to the main river, was still running plenty fast. The Blue Lagoon turned out to be the ‘Greeny-Brown Lagoon’ and not a lagoon at all but just a bend in the river with a small rope swing attached to an over-hanging tree. Oh well, it was another typically stinking hot day in Laos so in I went.

The swimming spot was fun, although the rope-swing was pitifully small, but the highlight turned out to be a couple we met there. They weren’t a ‘couple’ in the traditional sense as he was a twenty five year old Laos travel agent and she was a fiftyish South African lady who now resides in India. He was really nice, and actually so was she. However she was a Buddhist or Hindu or something in between and she proceeded to begin chanting and incanting at a furious pace in the direction of the sun and the lovely hillside vista in front of the swimming hole. No biggie, but when you’re trying to chillax and some old lady takes her top off, starts speaking in tongues and babbling at the sun it’s not quite what you were expecting when you showed up for a bit of a dip. You do meet all sorts. Like I said, babbling aside, they were really nice and we even met up with the bloke later on to watch the football World Cup final later that night.

All this brings me to the next day and the main event-the tubing. I had thought if I had had a late night the night before staying up watching soccer, then I would be able to cruise a bit more during the next day’s tubing and boozing. Wrong! This place is completely insane and the drinking begins almost as soon as you enter the water on your tube. We had met up with the three ladies from Guernsey we had met on the boat trip a few days earlier and headed out to the tubing spot three km’s upstream from town. I had hoped to take things easy as I had heard that on average about one tourist dies each year due to accidents whilst tubing. These mishaps tended to involve mixing copious amounts of drinking with the myriad of drugs that the locals try to sell you and a fast-flowing river. Throw in the fact that each bar along the river bank has huge rope-swings that shoot you out over the river and then drop you from about 8-9 metres into the swirling current below and it’s surprising that more people aren’t killed or injured each year.

There must be more than a dozen bars along the first stretch of the river all offering free-shots and high wire antics such as zip-lines, rope-swings and my personal favourite, the trapeze. Some bars even offer the more adventurous (or just plain crazy) marijuana shakes, mushroom shakes and for the truly unhinged (or Chinese!) opium shakes. Whoa. I think I’ll stick to the beers and the free shots thanks. At one bar the guy working there was a foreigner with a look on his face that screamed ‘Man I’ve been here waaay too long!’ but he was friendly enough and he promptly offered us all free shots of Bee whiskey. The bottle actually had Bees in it and I must say it wasn’t bad; it tasted a lot like honey funnily enough.

We got to the river relatively early seeing and as the World Cup final had been the night before things initially took a while to get going but once they did…Yassis, we all had an absolute ball. All the negative things I’d heard about Vang Vieng being just a place for English kids on their ‘gap-year’ to get laid quickly melted away and between the rope swings, the fantastic scenery, the beautiful weather and a few cans of ‘Beerlao’ things could not really have been better. The only drawback perhaps could’ve been that I expected the rope swings to be a little higher but they were still more than scary enough I guess but I had heard they were enormous so I was expecting a little more. The day passed by in a blur of rope swinging, beer-pong, attempting to cross and re-cross the river in order to reach other bars and it was all a total blast. I feel I have to add at this point that a lot of the backpacker blokes weren’t particularly brave as quite a few were sitting there drinking away but were nonetheless very reluctant to climb up into the trees to the launching platform in order to have a crack. Weak I reckon, especially as there were quite few girls getting up there and giving it a bloody good go. I don’t think my trying to describe this chaotic scene will really do much more to illustrate to you what this place was like but I’m sure the photos will. Just take my word for it; it was a lot of fun. If you get the chance, go, you won’t regret it.

The boozing and rope-swinging aside I have to say the best part of the whole experience is the tube ride back into the town. The tube journey takes about an hour and you can imagine what it looks like when a bunch of messy individuals all try to clamber into their tubes, only to realise that someone else has pinched theirs. Hilarious. Luckily Kate and I had kept an eagle eye on our tubes so when it came time to stagger into the swift currents of the river we were more than ready. The river is nice and wide and you float down like you’re travelling on some frictionless aqua highway through tropical jungle on each bank. As it was right on dusk as we set off I reckon we couldn’t have picked a better time to set out. Other people would float by periodically in all sorts of conditions, some with tubes, some without, but all more than happy to be doing nothing more than floating down this beautiful river half-cut.

At one point a bloke who must’ve had a kiddies inflatable tube around his waist below the waterline seemed to float by as if levitating, quickly earning him the nickname ‘Jesus’. ‘Save me Jesus!’ Everyone was so happy and friendly it was really at odds with what I had been expecting Vang Vieng to be all about. The float back to town will stay with me for a long while as being probably one of the most enjoyable experiences of our trip so far. Kate and I ‘rafted up’ whereby we draped our legs over the edge of each other’s tubes and glided effortlessly through the lush scenery on this amazing river back towards town. Wow, I actually feel like I’m gushing now as I write this so I better end it there before you all reading this think that I have finally flipped my lid and become some kind of river-loving hippy who plans to stay in Laos forever. Maybe that wouldn’t be so bad actually. Nah, just jokes, but it was really a helluva lot of fun! After tubing I literally went straight back to our guest house, fell into bed and went to sleep. Maybe I am getting old after all!

So ended our time in Vang Vieng and it was with some sadness that we were forced to leave in order to begin our trip up north to the remote frontier where we will slip over the border in to the far south of China. As I sit here we are due to cross over into China the day after tomorrow which we are both eagerly looking forward to. China is a bit of an internet black hole as apparently our BlogSpot website will not be able to be accessed from there and neither will Facebook. Shock horror! No Facebook, oh well. We have been plagued by slow internet speeds, technical difficulties on the part of the BlogSpot website we’re using and a few hardware issues of our own whilst in Laos all of which has delayed our posting of our adventures up until now. Rest assured, for those of you who are still actually reading this, we will toil unceasingly to ensure that we can keep you as up to date as possible with all of our adventures and misadventures in China. See how we get on with it all next time.

Buddha inside a cave.