It has been over a decade since my last trip to Vang Vieng. At the time it was a very quiet little town used as a stopover on the trip from Vientiane to Luang Prabang. The town itself is small, surrounding a Vietnam War era gravel landing strip situated on the Nam Song River. Since my last trip here it saw a boom in tourism created by a no-rules river tubing culture fueled by a combination of copious amounts of adrenaline inducing sports, inexpensive liquor and a fairly ready supply of other recreational drugs. That culture has been cut back on in the past couple of years as more and more deaths and injuries started piling up. It turns out that jumping from rope swings 10 meters above a shallow river can occasionally have some negative side effects. Anyway, most of the bars along the river are now closed (except those owned by the police) and while inexpensive liquor is still readily available, the other drugs are mostly gone from, from the river at least.
Shortly after Liz and I caught the minivan from Luang Prabang, we heard a rumor from the chatty lady in the front seat that Vang Vieng had no running water. She then started telling the horror stories she had heard, ‘it had been 10 days since they had water’, ‘nobody could flush toilets and the backup was getting dire’, ‘you couldn’t buy bottled water and people were hoping for rain so they could collect it’, ‘everyone had to shower together at one big water basin in town or in the river’. It turns out that she wasn’t completely incorrect. When we arrived we were told the water had been off for a couple of days but they had gotten some through. Hotels and guesthouses were mostly rationing water until it was fixed. We found a guesthouse on an island in the river that was not on the standard water grid, so lucked out with unrestricted water . That evening we wandered around the city to get a feel for things. It certainly had the feeling of a party town; drink specials at every bar including free drink hours at many, parades of drunk tourists marching down the streets from one bar to another en masse, laughing gas shots served in party balloons, people stumbling drunk pretty much everywhere. We enjoyed a few rounds of free drinks at the first bar we went to, and then the power went out. Not just at the bar, but the whole city. So, we were now in a city with a bunch of drunk tourists, scenic views over a lovely river, no power and no water… what could possibly go wrong. In the dark one of the gentleman at the table a little back from us who had been huffing laughing gas toppled to the floor. We decided to go for a change of scene to a quieter bar, thankfully Vang Vieng has lots of choices. We walked across the street and into the Irish pub with a live guitarist now playing by candlelight. It was really quite nice. We stuck around there for a bit more, the bartender had one of the most infectious smiles I’ve ever seen. After asking where we were from he said, “Seattle, yeah the Supersonics, Sounders and the Seahawks.. we had a guy in here from Seattle for the Superbowl…” I was happy to get to point out to him that the Sounders were doing better than the Galaxy currently after he said he heard they always win everything in the MLS.
Our time in Vang Vieng was relatively calm overall, we skipped tubing adventures and instead got Liz onto a bicycle to re-learn 
how to ride. Then took our little beach-cruiser style bikes up dirt roads, dirt trails and dried river beds to go cave exploring. We were accompanied by a very friendly dog, who gave up on the cave right about the
Party Town dog likes everyone
time I almost squished a spider by grabbing the wrong spot for support, I’m sure it just didn’t like the bats. We came back and were escorted by the dog back to the river, with a quick stop at a little roadside stall for water (the dog licking it from our cupped hands as we forgot to pack a bowl).
Notable on the wildlife front for Vang Vieng were a very large spider from the huntsman family in our room. They are very 
common throughout much of the tropics and harmless aside from a painful bite. They are also up to about 5 inches across and move so fast they look like bad CGI, so still a terrifying start to the morning. We also had a giant tokay lizard that hung out around the guest house. One night it decided to get curious about us and hang out right outside our door and let us snap some pictures, super cool.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heteropoda_venatoria
Seriously, this thing looks crazy when it runs
Tokay got curious about us.
Anyway, after a few days on the relaxing side of Vang Vieng we decided to make for the South of Laos, where life was a little quieter and internet was fairly non-existent.
Link to more pictures below, hope life is treating everyone well:
 |
| Vang Vieng |