Profile
Blog
Photos
Videos
We finally arrived in Vientianne, the capital of Laos to scorching heat. The short walk from the TukTuk to our hostel took less than 5 minutes but the midday sun combined with our heavy clinging bags made it fell like hours. In Vientianne there wasn't a great deal to do, and practically no night life at all, still we had a nice time relaxing in the shade of the water front cafe sipping on 20p fruit shakes. In the evening we decided to go to the local food arket where i got to watch Jack suffer eating an extremely spicy meal while i enjoyed the locals favourite - laap (larb). We spent a couple of days here and were pretty bored so we headed up North to Vang Vieng the place famous for great drunken tubing, we really could have stayed a life time.
Vang Vieng is a small town on the Mekong river and is just bursting with backpackers. Everybody who goes to Laos ends up spending all there time here. As you walk down the main tourist street all you can hear is Friends music playing. This is because all the restaurants have comfy sofas for you to lay down on and eat your meal while watching all the episodes after each other.
The main reason everyone goes here though is for the world famous tubing.This is where for a few pounds you hire a rubber tube for the day and casually float down the river all day. There are countless bars dotted all along the edges of the river that you just float into and spend a few hours drinking from buckets of whisky and coke and the amzingly cheapest beer in the world - Beer Lao.
We went on a tour that started off with us sitting in some tubes and floating down a cave that went maybe 1km into the hillside. Inside it was pitch black and you could casually float deeper inside, feeling the occasional warm spring underneath. After caving we went Kayaking down the river for a few km. This quickly turned into a large water fight betwen all our kayaks with the guide eventually putting us to shame with his amazing technique of creating a wall of water. Eventually we became worn out and headed into the most popular bar on the river, famous for its huge rope swing. After a few Beer Laos the group decided we would tackle it together and force each other to go on. I was second in the line with the guide at the front, this turned out to be a huge mistake. The guide having been on it hundreds of times started showing off by doing it one handed and holding on with his feet. This got the whole of the bar cheering (about 200 people) and then waiting for me to match it. You climb up a huge tree about the size of a 3 storey house, grab the bar with your hands and launch yourself off over the water. I went flying a huge speed, or so i thought, and then swung up on the other side of the swing. At the top most point (just over 2 storeys high) i tried someting both amazing and stupid - The backflip. This didn't turn out like i was planning and instead of me elegently performing a flip and landing neatly in the water, I fell arms flayling spinning in every which direction for what seemed like an eternity. Eventually i hit the water in an amazingly loud and painful backflop. When i surfaced all i could here was the whole bar cheering!
We later finshed the journey on kayak's and ended up havign to tow the drunken tubers back. We left the next day back for Vietianne and the on to Thailand for our ' Treasures of the North' Intrepid trip.
- comments