Vang Vieng – Adventure Hub
C & C | 29. December 2011The 150km journey North of Vientiane took almost 6 hours, making that an average of less than 30km/h. The road was winding and only partly paved, so it took forever. Vang Vieng is know for its adventure sports and has been marketing itself as such. There is caving, rock climbing, trekking and kayaking. It is actually famous for tubing down the Nam Song river while stopping at bars en route.
Vang Vieng is very laid-back and the bars cater to backpackers and young tourists who come here for fun. One of the specialities is bars showing episodes of “Friends” all day long. We ordered coconut shakes and watched Friends for hours at one of these. What a relaxing day! Unfortunately as the evening wears on, there are drunken people coming from the bars (Christoph calls them Mallorca people). They wear “muscle-shirts”, are loud and drunk, totally unfitting for a Buddhist country. But they are part of the Vang Vieng scene, which encourages them with cheap drinks.
We went on a one-day tour in the surrounding area. We were driven with a songtau for a while, then dropped off with a guide and a French couple. We walked a bit, talking to the guide, a nice 24-year-old guy, then visited 3 caves. “Elephant” cave was called so because of an elephant-looking formation by the entrance. The cave has a Buddha inside and is used as a temple. The other 2 caves (“Hole” cave and “Snail” cave) are deeper and left to their natural state, with many stalagmites and stalagtites. It was interesting, especially Snail cave because we went quite deep into it with our flashlights. We then walked a bit more and reached the place where we had lunch. Afterwards we went tubing in the “Water” cave, where we had to pull ourselves along a rope into the cave. The water was a bit cold at first, but it was fun to explore. From there we walked through quiet country-side sprinkled with karst peaks (similar to Yangshuo in China) until we reached a H’Mong village. The H’Mong minority (like in Sapa, Vietnam) are a hill tribe with their special customs. Right now they celebrate their New Year, so the entire village was gathered on the big grassland with food stands, playing games. The children were dressed up in traditional costumes, but not the adults. It was nice to see, even though they don’t seem to maintain their culture as much as the ethnic minorities in China. The last part of our tour was kayaking on the Nam Song river for 8km. The scenery was beautiful, with karst peaks and clean river water. We also passed some small rapids on the kayak and Christoph and Cecilia were a bit scared, as they hadn’t ever done that before. It went very well and luckily the river was pretty calm since the water level is low now, in the dry season. It was still an adrenaline rush, but Christoph steered the kayak masterfully. After a while the peace and quiet was broken by the bars where the tubing starts. Here, loud music, drunken youngsters and Tarzan swings spoil the scenery. It is interesting to see, because it isn’t really Laos. At least they’re all concentrated here, hehe. The problem is that many drink too much and then go tubing down the river, injuring themselves. We just went passed all this monkey business and continued our kayaking until we arrived back in Vang Vieng. It was a wonderful and fun-filled day!
We took pictures with a waterproof throw-away camera, so the quality is unfortunately horrible. The view were stunning though.
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