Francesca and Henk-Jan's Backpacking Trip!
Thursday, March 11, 2010
Vang Vieng Madness
On the 6th of March Francesca and I left Luang Prabang with a pang of sadness. We really enjoyed this laidback city and its food. However, there was more of Laos to explore and we needed to get to Vang Vieng. Why did you need to get to Vang Vieng you ask? Well, here’s why: my buddy Jelle, who was also traveling in South-East Asia for a while, wanted to come visit and had booked a train/bus from Malaysia all the way to Vang Vieng. So Francesca and I booked a minivan, hoping this ride would be a little better than our previous experience.
We were picked up in the early morning, finding our favorite spots in the front of the minivan. I had made Francesca some more of her much adored chicken sandwich for the trip, and picked up a tuna baguette for myself. Since I hadn’t taken any pictures of the Lao countryside as of yet I had the camera in hand and took some pictures to give you all a better idea of the rural life. Luckily the countryside here was very similar to what we had come across on our previous drive: very hilly, twisty-turny, with many tiny villages alongside of the road. The valleys are enormous and sometimes it seems the minivan is heading right off the cliff.
Francesca and I guessed we wouldn’t feel much after a good few 100 meters downhill. Everywhere local Lao men were working on the road. On the one hand a good sign, on the other a little frightening to us because the roads did need a lot of improving. We’re not sure if there was any method to the madness, for it didn’t look like they knew what they were doing; didn’t look like much was happening anyway. Another thing that struck us as odd was the young age at which Lao children start working. We saw toddlers with baskets of firewood and little girls with big machetes going to and fro to make a living.
Back to our drive: our drive was supposed to take about 4 hours, but when someone asked during lunchtime when we’d arrive we were still a few more hours out… By then Francesca and I just laughed, knowing you can generally add on 25% to 50% to the given travel time to get the actual time. We climbed back in the van with some cold drinks, and finally made it to the outskirts of Vang Vieng in the early afternoon. One more break and an ice cream later we made it to the bus station in Vang Vieng. We had to pay a little too much for a sawngthaew to town, but there were no other options, so we paid anyway. The driver had managed to cram about 12 backpackers into the tiny pick-up, making the 10 minute drive very cozy and a little like a sauna.
I had given the driver the name of the guesthouse we’d wanted to go to, so he dropped us off in the center of town and whilst I moved the bags Francesca checked in. She got us a nice room in the Viengvilay and we chilled out for the remainder of the day. I had hoped we’d be able to get more baguettes, but the few stalls on the streets looked far from appetizing. Instead, Francesca and I looked at the Indian options, finding another Nazim and another Nisha restaurant! Yay for Indian immigrants! We ate a slightly watery Chicken Palak and Chicken Tikka Masala and returned to the Viengvilay to recover from the drive.
I had wanted to tell you a bit more about Vang Vieng, because there’s really only one reason people come here. Vang Vieng has the luck of being rather centrally located in Laos, being stuck in between the tourist trail from Luang Prabang and the capital Vientiane, as well as Phonsavanh in the east. Backpackers do not come to Vang Vieng for cultural immersion. They come for one reason only: buckets. Vang Vieng is blessed by the presence of high cliffs and a cool river, which some businessmen cleverly started using for tubing. Tubing is floating down the river on a large inner-tube of, say, a tractor. This is all I knew about Vang Vieng before we experienced it ourselves…
The town itself consists of 2 streets, both littered with TV Bars, where comfortable seating arrangements with loads of cushions make for many lazy afternoons for the hung-over travelers. The TVs all show The Simpsons, Family Guy or Friends. The menus all consists of the same list: baguettes, pizza, pasta, rice dishes and some local food. An ‘interesting’ option is the ‘happy’ pizza. Let’s say this pizza gets a little extra mushroom topping for a unique aftertaste. Between the TV Bars one either finds a massage parlor, an internet café or a travel agency, or a combination of any of the aforementioned. In the early evenings several bars open, mainly on the little island in the middle of the river. More about that later!
Jelle was supposed to arrive in the afternoon of the 7th so I had booked him a room in our guesthouse. The afternoon passed and I thought I heard his voice in the distance. I walked downstairs and there he was! My big brother! He had come in and reception had had no idea about a reservation for him, or our presence. He had found another hotel further down the street, so it was all good! We went for dinner with the three of us, promising to meet up with his 2 companions later that evening for some partying. We found a pizza place and sat down for some good conversations! We ordered pizza, only to find out about 20 minutes later that they had no pizza… We changed our order to pizza bread and waited a little longer for our baguettes a la pizza! Around 8:30 PM we had had enough of sitting around and crossed the bridge of no return.
The little island in the river I told you about earlier is connected to the ‘mainland’ by a crooked bamboo bridge. Once you cross the bridge you enter a completely different world. The scene is lit up by signs beckoning the backpackers to their bars. We were to meet Jelle’s new friends in the Bucket Bar. We got some free buckets and the sat down on a carpet near the campfire in the middle of the open air bar. A bucket is basically one of those tiny beach buckets filled up with ice, local whisky (or another alcoholic beverage), mixed with Coke, Sprite or Red Bull. Add some straws and the bucket is ready. Jelle’s friends, a Dutch girl named Anne Nynke and a British guy called Chris joined us and we talked about our travels for a good hour or two before hitting the dance floor. Again, dance floor is a euphemism, for you either dance on the wooden platforms around the fire or you kick up dirt around said platforms. We’re not entirely sure when the night ended, but we woke up surprisingly fresh around 9:00 AM!
We’d discussed the 8th with Jelle the day before and tubing was on the menu for today. We went to pick up Jelle and Chris around 10 AM; Anne had gone missing. We went for a much-needed breakfast first, eating baguettes and drinking orange juice. We went to change and met up in front of the tubing office around 12:30 PM. We got our tubes and jumped in a sawngthaew, and headed for the starting point of our tubing experience. We already got a little taste from a completely hung-over Swedish guy who kept muttering he needed more whisky. Like his friend, he looked like he needed sleep more…
A good 15 minutes later we were rolling our tubes down to the river. It looked nothing like we had expected! There was indeed a little tubing going on, but mainly people were dragging themselves from bar to bar. Each bar had music blasting out of giant speakers, selling more buckets and BeerLao. Also, each bar had their own little attraction: a swing, a sling, a zipline or another little platform to throw yourself off of. We jumped in the river and were soon pulled in again by some locals with water bottles on ropes that they throw at you and your tube. We got off out tubes, parked them safely and climbed up to the bar. Here, we started with some BeerLao (my first since a looooong time!) and absorbed the madness. Francesca compared the tubing to spring break in Cancun. After the drink I climbed up the first tower, a zipline that came to a sudden halt and sent me in a 360 degrees backwards flip, landing right on my face. Jelle and Chris followed: Jelle faceplanting as well, but Chris showed he had learned from me and let go before the break.
Jelle, Francesca and I decided to hit the next bar, whilst Chris caught up with a friend. We sat down and got a Mojito Bucket, watching the people float down the river, flying off the slings. Jelle and I tried the swing here as well, and eventually managed to convince Francesca to go. It took her a while to gather to courage to go, but when she went she went! She jumped off, letting go a little after the lowest point in the swing, almost skipping over the water on her way down! Impressive!
Next, we found ourselves at the Mud Bar, a slightly quieter place where we had another bucket and got some free BeerLao from the owner of our hostel! By 4:00 PM it was getting a little less comfortable outside and Jelle and I did another round of swings, before heading on down the river. We tried to go down a giant slide, but had to buy a drink to be able to. We had had enough and did the final stint to the end of the tubing-section of the river. We returned to our rooms for a long, hot shower and a short rest. We met up with Anne, Chris and Jelle for dinner. I had my first taste of a traditional Lao dish: chicken laap, which is basically minced meat with mint and other herbs, served with sticky rice. The others went for Italian food, falling asleep after dinner. I sat around watching football whilst the other 4 got some shut-eye.
When they woke up we went to the Q Bar, where we danced for a few hours, before heading back to Viengvilay relatively early. The partying from the previous evenings was catching up with me and some rest would do us good with more parties coming up. We slept like babies, right through the music and TVs.
The ninth Jelle went back to the river whilst Francesca and I spent some time uploading our pictures and finalizing our posts from the previous month. We had had our posts ready for a while, but the internet in Laos has been rather slow, so we couldn’t upload anything. If you’ve been missing your favorite blog, we apologize and ask you to take up any complaints with the Lao government. We met up with Jelle, who had turned entirely orange during the day, in the evening and went back to the Bucket Bar. We got the free buckets during Happy Hour and sat down in the hammocks for a while, singing along with classics from Oasis. Jelle and I turned Francesca’s hammock into a swing, whilst she was still in it.
Happy Hour ended and we headed for the Q Bar, once again dancing the night away, happily sharing buckets (well, the others; I stuck to BeerLao) and making merry. Our orange man got a lot of comments and scored himself a reasonable amount of free booze due to his orange-ness. We also spent some time in the Bucket Bar, before making our way back to the guesthouse for sleep at an unknown hour.
Sadly, on the 10th Jelle’s stay had to end as he had to get back to Vientiane for his flight back to Kuala Lumpur. Jelle and I had breakfast together, booked his ticket and Francesca and I, Chris and Anne sent him on his way. Francesca and I had bought him a BeerLao t-shirt to remember Vang Vieng and us by, and with his new shirt (and still orange body in it) he left Vang Vieng behind. Francesca and I went for lunch in a TV Bar, watching Friends for several hours. We decided to stay two more days in Vang Vieng just to rest up, before going to Vientiane. We ate some more Indian and finalized our posts in the remaining days. We went out to the bars for a while each day, but came home early.
On the 11th we met up with Chris for brunch, watching some more Friends before jumping in a dusty minivan to the bus station. Francesca will tell you all about our trip to Vientiane!
We were picked up in the early morning, finding our favorite spots in the front of the minivan. I had made Francesca some more of her much adored chicken sandwich for the trip, and picked up a tuna baguette for myself. Since I hadn’t taken any pictures of the Lao countryside as of yet I had the camera in hand and took some pictures to give you all a better idea of the rural life. Luckily the countryside here was very similar to what we had come across on our previous drive: very hilly, twisty-turny, with many tiny villages alongside of the road. The valleys are enormous and sometimes it seems the minivan is heading right off the cliff.
Francesca and I guessed we wouldn’t feel much after a good few 100 meters downhill. Everywhere local Lao men were working on the road. On the one hand a good sign, on the other a little frightening to us because the roads did need a lot of improving. We’re not sure if there was any method to the madness, for it didn’t look like they knew what they were doing; didn’t look like much was happening anyway. Another thing that struck us as odd was the young age at which Lao children start working. We saw toddlers with baskets of firewood and little girls with big machetes going to and fro to make a living.
Back to our drive: our drive was supposed to take about 4 hours, but when someone asked during lunchtime when we’d arrive we were still a few more hours out… By then Francesca and I just laughed, knowing you can generally add on 25% to 50% to the given travel time to get the actual time. We climbed back in the van with some cold drinks, and finally made it to the outskirts of Vang Vieng in the early afternoon. One more break and an ice cream later we made it to the bus station in Vang Vieng. We had to pay a little too much for a sawngthaew to town, but there were no other options, so we paid anyway. The driver had managed to cram about 12 backpackers into the tiny pick-up, making the 10 minute drive very cozy and a little like a sauna.
I had given the driver the name of the guesthouse we’d wanted to go to, so he dropped us off in the center of town and whilst I moved the bags Francesca checked in. She got us a nice room in the Viengvilay and we chilled out for the remainder of the day. I had hoped we’d be able to get more baguettes, but the few stalls on the streets looked far from appetizing. Instead, Francesca and I looked at the Indian options, finding another Nazim and another Nisha restaurant! Yay for Indian immigrants! We ate a slightly watery Chicken Palak and Chicken Tikka Masala and returned to the Viengvilay to recover from the drive.
I had wanted to tell you a bit more about Vang Vieng, because there’s really only one reason people come here. Vang Vieng has the luck of being rather centrally located in Laos, being stuck in between the tourist trail from Luang Prabang and the capital Vientiane, as well as Phonsavanh in the east. Backpackers do not come to Vang Vieng for cultural immersion. They come for one reason only: buckets. Vang Vieng is blessed by the presence of high cliffs and a cool river, which some businessmen cleverly started using for tubing. Tubing is floating down the river on a large inner-tube of, say, a tractor. This is all I knew about Vang Vieng before we experienced it ourselves…
The town itself consists of 2 streets, both littered with TV Bars, where comfortable seating arrangements with loads of cushions make for many lazy afternoons for the hung-over travelers. The TVs all show The Simpsons, Family Guy or Friends. The menus all consists of the same list: baguettes, pizza, pasta, rice dishes and some local food. An ‘interesting’ option is the ‘happy’ pizza. Let’s say this pizza gets a little extra mushroom topping for a unique aftertaste. Between the TV Bars one either finds a massage parlor, an internet café or a travel agency, or a combination of any of the aforementioned. In the early evenings several bars open, mainly on the little island in the middle of the river. More about that later!
Jelle was supposed to arrive in the afternoon of the 7th so I had booked him a room in our guesthouse. The afternoon passed and I thought I heard his voice in the distance. I walked downstairs and there he was! My big brother! He had come in and reception had had no idea about a reservation for him, or our presence. He had found another hotel further down the street, so it was all good! We went for dinner with the three of us, promising to meet up with his 2 companions later that evening for some partying. We found a pizza place and sat down for some good conversations! We ordered pizza, only to find out about 20 minutes later that they had no pizza… We changed our order to pizza bread and waited a little longer for our baguettes a la pizza! Around 8:30 PM we had had enough of sitting around and crossed the bridge of no return.
The little island in the river I told you about earlier is connected to the ‘mainland’ by a crooked bamboo bridge. Once you cross the bridge you enter a completely different world. The scene is lit up by signs beckoning the backpackers to their bars. We were to meet Jelle’s new friends in the Bucket Bar. We got some free buckets and the sat down on a carpet near the campfire in the middle of the open air bar. A bucket is basically one of those tiny beach buckets filled up with ice, local whisky (or another alcoholic beverage), mixed with Coke, Sprite or Red Bull. Add some straws and the bucket is ready. Jelle’s friends, a Dutch girl named Anne Nynke and a British guy called Chris joined us and we talked about our travels for a good hour or two before hitting the dance floor. Again, dance floor is a euphemism, for you either dance on the wooden platforms around the fire or you kick up dirt around said platforms. We’re not entirely sure when the night ended, but we woke up surprisingly fresh around 9:00 AM!
We’d discussed the 8th with Jelle the day before and tubing was on the menu for today. We went to pick up Jelle and Chris around 10 AM; Anne had gone missing. We went for a much-needed breakfast first, eating baguettes and drinking orange juice. We went to change and met up in front of the tubing office around 12:30 PM. We got our tubes and jumped in a sawngthaew, and headed for the starting point of our tubing experience. We already got a little taste from a completely hung-over Swedish guy who kept muttering he needed more whisky. Like his friend, he looked like he needed sleep more…
A good 15 minutes later we were rolling our tubes down to the river. It looked nothing like we had expected! There was indeed a little tubing going on, but mainly people were dragging themselves from bar to bar. Each bar had music blasting out of giant speakers, selling more buckets and BeerLao. Also, each bar had their own little attraction: a swing, a sling, a zipline or another little platform to throw yourself off of. We jumped in the river and were soon pulled in again by some locals with water bottles on ropes that they throw at you and your tube. We got off out tubes, parked them safely and climbed up to the bar. Here, we started with some BeerLao (my first since a looooong time!) and absorbed the madness. Francesca compared the tubing to spring break in Cancun. After the drink I climbed up the first tower, a zipline that came to a sudden halt and sent me in a 360 degrees backwards flip, landing right on my face. Jelle and Chris followed: Jelle faceplanting as well, but Chris showed he had learned from me and let go before the break.
Jelle, Francesca and I decided to hit the next bar, whilst Chris caught up with a friend. We sat down and got a Mojito Bucket, watching the people float down the river, flying off the slings. Jelle and I tried the swing here as well, and eventually managed to convince Francesca to go. It took her a while to gather to courage to go, but when she went she went! She jumped off, letting go a little after the lowest point in the swing, almost skipping over the water on her way down! Impressive!
Next, we found ourselves at the Mud Bar, a slightly quieter place where we had another bucket and got some free BeerLao from the owner of our hostel! By 4:00 PM it was getting a little less comfortable outside and Jelle and I did another round of swings, before heading on down the river. We tried to go down a giant slide, but had to buy a drink to be able to. We had had enough and did the final stint to the end of the tubing-section of the river. We returned to our rooms for a long, hot shower and a short rest. We met up with Anne, Chris and Jelle for dinner. I had my first taste of a traditional Lao dish: chicken laap, which is basically minced meat with mint and other herbs, served with sticky rice. The others went for Italian food, falling asleep after dinner. I sat around watching football whilst the other 4 got some shut-eye.
When they woke up we went to the Q Bar, where we danced for a few hours, before heading back to Viengvilay relatively early. The partying from the previous evenings was catching up with me and some rest would do us good with more parties coming up. We slept like babies, right through the music and TVs.
The ninth Jelle went back to the river whilst Francesca and I spent some time uploading our pictures and finalizing our posts from the previous month. We had had our posts ready for a while, but the internet in Laos has been rather slow, so we couldn’t upload anything. If you’ve been missing your favorite blog, we apologize and ask you to take up any complaints with the Lao government. We met up with Jelle, who had turned entirely orange during the day, in the evening and went back to the Bucket Bar. We got the free buckets during Happy Hour and sat down in the hammocks for a while, singing along with classics from Oasis. Jelle and I turned Francesca’s hammock into a swing, whilst she was still in it.
Happy Hour ended and we headed for the Q Bar, once again dancing the night away, happily sharing buckets (well, the others; I stuck to BeerLao) and making merry. Our orange man got a lot of comments and scored himself a reasonable amount of free booze due to his orange-ness. We also spent some time in the Bucket Bar, before making our way back to the guesthouse for sleep at an unknown hour.
Sadly, on the 10th Jelle’s stay had to end as he had to get back to Vientiane for his flight back to Kuala Lumpur. Jelle and I had breakfast together, booked his ticket and Francesca and I, Chris and Anne sent him on his way. Francesca and I had bought him a BeerLao t-shirt to remember Vang Vieng and us by, and with his new shirt (and still orange body in it) he left Vang Vieng behind. Francesca and I went for lunch in a TV Bar, watching Friends for several hours. We decided to stay two more days in Vang Vieng just to rest up, before going to Vientiane. We ate some more Indian and finalized our posts in the remaining days. We went out to the bars for a while each day, but came home early.
On the 11th we met up with Chris for brunch, watching some more Friends before jumping in a dusty minivan to the bus station. Francesca will tell you all about our trip to Vientiane!
