Vang Vieng and Vientiane

Vang Vieng is the weirdest place on Earth. Truly bizarre. We arrived at Vang Vieng in the early afternoon and were pretty underwhelmed - it just looked like a dry, dusty small town with no redeeming features. Dan set off to find us somewhere to stay while I waited with our bags in a cafe. There was no electricity at the time so all I could order was a soda water. The underwhelming experience continued. Dan came back for me and took me to where he had found a room - it was actually a small, basic wooden bungalow on the riverbank, surrounded by vegetable gardens and fields with a stunning backdrop of limestone karsts. So that was pretty impressive.

 The view from our bungalow

Later that night we strolled into town to find something to eat. We were surprised to find the streets lined with restaurants, all with televisions showing episodes of Friends or Family Guy, and all the restaurants were full of drunk (or possibly stoned) backpackers all staring blanky at the tvs. What was even stranger though was, as the night went on, the streets filled up with drunken backpackers who were all only wearing bikinis or boardies. We didn't know what was happening. It all became clear on our 2nd day in Vang Vieng when we went out to explore some caves then went tubing down the river.

The tubing was surreal. The idea is to float down the river towards Vang Vieng on an inner tyre tube. It's about a 3km trip and we were told that it should take about 3 hours. We expected some small rapids and some stunning scenery, what we didn't expect was the bar after bar after bar that lined the riverbanks, all full of backpackers chugging Beer Laos. Some of the bars had slides and swings going into the river, after a few beers Dan went down a really massive slide, he took it too fast and ended up hitting the water sideways, hurting his ankle and bruising his side. We stopped at about 4 bars and we ended up taking about 4 hours to get back to Vang Vieng. We realised that all the backpackers who we'd seen in the streets at night time in their swimwear must have stopped at nearly every bar and had ended spending hours and hours on the river. 

So that was Vang Vieng, an alcohol soaked backpackers Disneyland. Next stop, Vientiane, the capital of Laos.

Rather than catching a bus directly to Vientiane we decided to kayak part of the way. Which ended up not saving us any time at all and we had to spend more time in the back of a tuk-tuk. But the kayaking was pretty fun. We went down a few rapids and, due to my extensive experience and superior kayaking skills, we managed to stay upright. (Ok, that wasn't completely true, we didn't capsize but I think it was more because Dan knew what he was doing. I sat up the front of the kayak with my oar up in the air until Dan yelled at me to paddle.) Our kayaking trip included a bbq lunch which our guides cooked for us on the rocks of the riverbed. We also had the opportunity to jump off a cliff face into the river - a drop of about 12-13m. Needless to say I passed, but Dan did the jump.



 Dan jumping into the river

Finally, after another tuk-tuk ride, we arrived in Vientiane. We only had 1 day in Vientiane so we had a quick look around the sights, including Pha That Luang: Laos' most important national and religious monument; and Patuxai: Laos' version of the Arc de Triomphe which was built in the 1960s out of concrete dontated by the US in order to build a new airport.

 Blending in with the demons at one of the temples surrounding Pha That Luang

 Dan in the foreground, Pha That Luang in the background

Patuxai, also known as the vertical runway. Patuxai remains unfinished and a sign on the interior states that, on close inspection, it resembles a concrete monster

Then it was back to Vietnam, back to Soc Trang and back to work. Not for long, however. It's taken me about 3 weeks to write about our holiday, which means in another week we will be off to Hanoi, Halong Bay and Sapa. Then we only have another 3 weeks of work until our volunteer contract expires and we head back to Australia, via Malaysia and Indonesia. In addition to holidaying, our next few weeks will involve finishing up all the work we can, trying to sell our furniture, posting all our excess possessions back home and trying to pack the rest. Busy times! I need a holiday just from thinking about it!