Profile
Blog
Photos
Videos
Laos – Vang Vien
Sat 7th November till Mon 9th November
An early start on the Saturday, grabbed a take away coffee from JoMa Café (no time for food). Picked up at 8am from the travel company by a Tuk Tuk, this took us to the local bus station where we boarded our VIP bus to Vang Vien. Wasn’t such a VIP bus to be honest, just your regular coach with little leg room and rubbish air con!! The bus set of at 9am, the journey expected to take about 5 hours. The scenery we passed was beautiful as the bus route took us through the mountains. However this meant long windy roads up a mountain down a mountain, within an hour we both started to feel a little sick!! Also the bus drivers like to think there are rally drivers, no speed caution and defiantly no crash barriers. So we’re talking a massive drop of the side….just a little scary!! Kimmy was sure to keep her eyes closed at this point! About 1ish we stopped off at a restaurant where we were given a free lunch (included in the ticket). The meal looked good…sweet n sour pork with rice. Nothing prepared us for what was to come….I had the first mouthful and OH MY GOD was it spicy!! Willoughby thought I was overacting as he piled in a massive mouthful, hehe I had to chuckle at his response!!! We have never tried anything so spicy, we only managed about 4 mouthfuls before we had to give up as our mouths were on fire, tears streaming and our noses dripping like a tap…lovely jubilee!!
We reached Vang Vien about 3pm…so in total 6 hours. Like everywhere the bus stopped off about a mile out of town so we had to find a Tuk Tuk to take us into the centre. We wondered around viewing different guesthouses for about an hour before finding one that we liked. The rooms were all really basic, but some were really dingy. We found one for a bargain $6 a night, the room was a good size and clean. Once we checked in we went for a stroll around to get our bearings, it was completely different to Lurang Prabang. A lot smaller and just rows of bars and restaurants, you could tell it was an area for young people. There were many young people getting around town on crutches…we guessed they were all tubing injuries! All the bars had friends playing, the seats all set out like loungers. It was like lying in bed with a table. We were pretty starving so stopped for something to eat, opposite was the tubing office!! Was pretty funny watching all the pissed people staggering back as the night went on. If you have never heard of tubing….Google it!! We had never heard of it until we met a couple on our Halong Bay tour, they had been and loved it.
Today (Sunday) was tubing day! We had some breakfast in the Aussie bar, tucked into a big brekkie. We figured it would be wise considering we would probably be drinking most of the day. We then made our way over to the tubing office to buy our ticket and get our tube, the tubes are the inner tubes of trackers/lorries. The price includes your Tuk Tuk drive up to the first bar, we shared ours with another couple. They were really nice, an Irish couple travelling similar to us. We spent the rest of the day with them. We got dropped off at bar 1 where we would begin the day on the river, it was crazy! There were about 10 bars in total, all wooden shacks along the riverside. Some had Zip wires, one had a slide and some had mud pools and volleyball nets! Each bar was full of people, drinking their buckets of cocktails. We avoided these and stuck to beer with sprite…best to be sensible than become a tubing statistic!! At least 15 people died on the river last year, the last guy died a month before we arrived!! Basically people get ridiculously drunk, get silly on the zip wires, and get lost while floating down the river. So we kept our eyes open and kept wise….obviously we didn’t stay 100% sober but enough to know what we were doing. It got to 4pm at we were only on bar number 6 and who knows where we were on the river, no where indicated how far away we were from the end. The tubes had to be returned by 6pm otherwise you got charged more money, so we decided to make our way back. Floating down the river in our tubes we thought it would only take a little while. We were so wrong, an hour and a half later we reached the end. The last stretch wasn’t great but overall we had a great laugh and would recommend it to everyone! As long as you’re careful then it’s a great day.
Our last day in Vang Vien was a quiet one, apart from tubing there isn’t a lot else to do!! So we spent most of the day chilling out in a bar watching friends, I think in total we had watched the whole of the final series!!! Now and then we would take a stroll around the town, we brought a tubing vest each from one of the many shops (all selling the same). Ended the afternoon in the Irish pub, a few drinks and games of pool!! In the evening we enjoyed a lovely BBQ dinner, very good value and tasted damn good! We sadly watch a few more episodes of friends before calling it a night!!!
- comments