Vang Vieng
We stayed in a nice bungalow overlooking the river and the jagged limestone mountains to the west of us. We argued a little over the price--8 dollars or 80,000 kip. The bus dropped us off at the place after circulating a color flyer on the way up, rather than at the airstrip just to the east of town as normal buses do. The coersion turned me off, but we were just outside of town; the place was quiet and the view was more coersive than the connected bus drivers had been.
Into town looking for something to eat, waiting for Christa to show up. We eat at this organic farms cafe that seemed to have a pretentious hippie feel lurking in the shadows, but days later I'm mulling over a fantasy of working there for a week or two in exchange for room and board.
Vang Vieng is a tourist town. There is no way around that. It's anything but 'offthebeatentrack' and by the end of our soujourn there I was convinced it was the land form of a cruise--Royal SE Asia. People arrive there in droves and the one local that I was able to hold a conversation with told me the only traditional Lao food you could find in town was on the street. The restauarants all catering to western tastes. In the bars along the main street, TVs play constantly, most with a DVD of Friends reruns on repeat. One showed the Simpsons, one showed Family Guy.
Possibly the most enjoyable part of Vang Vieng was tubing down the river that runs alongside of town. 4$ gets you a tube and a ride 3 km up the river. You put in and in less than 100m there is a guy with a long stick beckoning you to come and enjoy a Beer Lao and his zipline built out from a tree with bamboo, running into the water. How could you resist that. Nevermind the fact that it's 11am, it's hot! A short while later, perhaps another 100 200m and another guy has a rope swing and a long bamboo stick with which he brings in his catch. This continues down to the town with some smaller some larger makeshift bars and ropeswings, places to jump out of and shacks to get food at. A few of the ropeswings are rather large, one of them Traci biffed off of (video coming shortly) and some are so hopelessly small in comparison that I feel bad for the solitary guy sitting on his dock shouting at the disinterested passersby. By the end Christa, Traci and I were a mess, as was everyone else on the river, but decided to stop off at the bar on the way home, aptly named the Happy Cafe. It was such a merry place that the owner even named his daughter, 4 months old, Happy.
Vang Vieng wasn't all bloating and floating. One day I rented a bike and toured some of the local caves on the opposite side of the river. The lamps given to me by the guides and other locals sitting in the bushes trying to make a buck were dodgey at best. One I had to twist two wires together to get it to turn on. That was a cave I didn't go very deeply into. The next cave, however, I realized my guide periodically pulled out a lighter to melt some of the inuslation off his wires so he could twist them together. We were already quite some way in, light being a faint glow behind us. This cave was large, with slippery ledges abutting gaping chasms. I ended up jumping out of a tree with a Lao boy and swimming in the lagoon with a slightly pompous rich Israeli. Good times.
I also went climbing, coincidentally behind the bar on the river that did me in two days prior. I was the only one with the guide, but wish I could have had a little more time to rest in between climbs. I kept falling off the last route at a difficult part because of hand failure.
Then we left, went to Luang Prabang for a few days of walking around the small city.
Into town looking for something to eat, waiting for Christa to show up. We eat at this organic farms cafe that seemed to have a pretentious hippie feel lurking in the shadows, but days later I'm mulling over a fantasy of working there for a week or two in exchange for room and board.
Vang Vieng is a tourist town. There is no way around that. It's anything but 'offthebeatentrack' and by the end of our soujourn there I was convinced it was the land form of a cruise--Royal SE Asia. People arrive there in droves and the one local that I was able to hold a conversation with told me the only traditional Lao food you could find in town was on the street. The restauarants all catering to western tastes. In the bars along the main street, TVs play constantly, most with a DVD of Friends reruns on repeat. One showed the Simpsons, one showed Family Guy.
Possibly the most enjoyable part of Vang Vieng was tubing down the river that runs alongside of town. 4$ gets you a tube and a ride 3 km up the river. You put in and in less than 100m there is a guy with a long stick beckoning you to come and enjoy a Beer Lao and his zipline built out from a tree with bamboo, running into the water. How could you resist that. Nevermind the fact that it's 11am, it's hot! A short while later, perhaps another 100 200m and another guy has a rope swing and a long bamboo stick with which he brings in his catch. This continues down to the town with some smaller some larger makeshift bars and ropeswings, places to jump out of and shacks to get food at. A few of the ropeswings are rather large, one of them Traci biffed off of (video coming shortly) and some are so hopelessly small in comparison that I feel bad for the solitary guy sitting on his dock shouting at the disinterested passersby. By the end Christa, Traci and I were a mess, as was everyone else on the river, but decided to stop off at the bar on the way home, aptly named the Happy Cafe. It was such a merry place that the owner even named his daughter, 4 months old, Happy.
Vang Vieng wasn't all bloating and floating. One day I rented a bike and toured some of the local caves on the opposite side of the river. The lamps given to me by the guides and other locals sitting in the bushes trying to make a buck were dodgey at best. One I had to twist two wires together to get it to turn on. That was a cave I didn't go very deeply into. The next cave, however, I realized my guide periodically pulled out a lighter to melt some of the inuslation off his wires so he could twist them together. We were already quite some way in, light being a faint glow behind us. This cave was large, with slippery ledges abutting gaping chasms. I ended up jumping out of a tree with a Lao boy and swimming in the lagoon with a slightly pompous rich Israeli. Good times.
I also went climbing, coincidentally behind the bar on the river that did me in two days prior. I was the only one with the guide, but wish I could have had a little more time to rest in between climbs. I kept falling off the last route at a difficult part because of hand failure.
Then we left, went to Luang Prabang for a few days of walking around the small city.
posted by The Principal at 2:54 PM
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