Heading South

After four days in Vang Vieng it was time to move onwards. I can defiantly see how people could get waylaid there for weeks though. In a lot of ways it is just a continual frat party although much more laid back and lao style than the south of Thailand. The main thing to do in the town is tubing down the river. Basically you get taken upstream and then float down past bars sporting all kinds of activities from giant swings and slides to volleyball nets. Even for someone not interested in the free shots of lao whiskey and other beverages I’d recommend it. It is a 40 minute ride down the river past some stunning scenery. There is very little actual Lao in this town though and one has to wonder how the locals feel about the constant stream of drunken college students flowing through the streets after curfew (everything in Laos needs to be closed by midnight).

As fun as tubing was I did need a little more out of the town and made it down to play volleyball and a variant of lawn bowling with the locals. I also rented a mountain bike to get out to some of the caves and local villages. Lonely Planet provided a very rough map which said the trip was about 43km but I think mine was closer to 50km as I wound up taking a couple of detours. I am hesitant to say I was lost because I didn’t know where I was going in the first place. It was great fun to be out on the roads as the only falang. Tons of little kids would come up and give me high fives as I went around. It was lucky that I did my little adventure on a mountain bike though because I had to wade through several streams carrying it over my shoulders to complete my journey.

Yesterday I decided to leave Vang Vieng but I opted for a little more style than the bus. Kayaking is clearly way more fun! We took a bus for a couple hours, then kayaked for about 4 hours then finished it off with another 2 hour tuk tuk ride. The rapids weren’t too crazy but we had a great group of people who formed raiding parties to knock each other in instead. I did actually get turfed during one set of rapids but overall they were pretty small. The only downside to this adventure was the tuk tuk ride to Vientiane. At one point there were 18 people crammed into the truck as the driver decided to pick up locals despite the fact the customers who paid for the ride couldn’t even all fit. The net result was people hanging off the back and at one point a crazy American got fed up and went on the roof. There was also a very sad incident were the driver ran over a dog. Luckily karma came to the rescue and the driver got fined by the police for having too many people in his car.
Today I think I’m just going to do another walking tour of the city and then I’m going to blast south which might put me out of contact for a while. I’m not sure if they have ATMs let alone internet down there.