Vang Vieng

Last Tubers of the Day, Vang Vieng

We arrived in Vang Vieng after a rather hairy seven hour minibus taxi ride from Luang Prabang. The trip was advertised as four hours, but our busted up transport was definitely past it’s sell by date. It was old, cramped and very slow.

If the bus was old and tired, the driver was even more so. Never before has there been such a perfect match. If it hadn’t been for Anne, who was sitting up front talking to him in Northern Thai, he would certainly have fallen asleep. As it was, his eyes would shut for moments until Anne politely prompted him with a question or comment and he would wake up. At least it wasn’t possible to go fast in the old banger, which allowed us to enjoy the spectacular views from the numerous mountain passes.

Set on the Nam Song River amongst a series of grand karst limestone peaks which dominate the landscape, Vang Vieng is a dusty collection of concrete guest-houses, woven bamboo bungalows, bars, restaurants and backpacker amenities: internet cafes, travel agents and the like. Bamboo bridges, which are rebuilt seasonally after the rains, crisscross the river.

We found some nice accommodation at the Other Side Bungalows, across a rickety bamboo bridge from the main drag.

In the evening, the whole town feels like a festival. The muddy streets are lined with dozens of bars, each trying to outdo its neighbours with the number of blinking lights on display and the volume of the music blasting out – no matter how few customers they have. At our bungalow, the lights would flicker, seemingly in time to the distant beats rolling across the river from the louder bars. Its as if the towns electricity supply (available most of the time) has been overloaded by the bar sound systems, causing the synchronicity between our pulsing lights and the music.

Occasionally you’ll bump into stumbling, laughing, crazy-eyed gap-year students falling around the streets: they’ve had a bit too much from the “happy” menu available at the bars.

Set further back from the river you’ll find lots of restaurants with TVs prominently displayed, most playing the US TV series Friends day and night. A few play Family Guy. Its bizarre in the extreme: in Laos, in this incredibly beautiful setting, people are spending their time watching crap American TV.

Tubing in the Vang Vieng

Vang Vieng’s main attraction is the tubing. This involves hiring a large tractor tyre inner-tube and traveling by tuk-tuk to a point several kilometres upstream of Vang Vieng on the Nam Song from where you can float back to the town.

If you think it sounds like a serene, relaxing way to spend an afternoon you couldn’t be more wrong. The river is lined with dozens of bars, each with a pumping sound-system, a zip-line, swing or water-slide for the amusement of drunken patrons and possibly also a dance floor full of people cutting rug in their costumes. Most of the bars also offer free shots of Lao-lao, a brutally strong moonshine and also have the ubiquitous happy menu.

Within minutes of floating out onto the river, Richie had nearly had a drunk Japanese guy fall out of the sky on him – he fell from a swing and landed inches from where Richie had serenely been floating along. Some of the swings actually cross paths, so if you or the other swinger (er? I’m guessing that’s not the best name for someone using a swing?) are not paying attention, you could easily have a nasty mid-air collision.

In fact, the whole place is a bit like a scene from one of those silly Health & Safety training videos. You can almost imagine the scene on video with a voiceover in 1950′s BBC-english saying something like: “As you can see, several major health & safety violations are occurring. Can you spot them?”

Very soon you’ve had too much to drink for someone who’s supposed to be swimming 4km down a river (even if you have got a floatation aid).

As the afternoon rolled on, we began to realise that we hadn’t made very much progress back to town. There is a late-fee if you return the tube later than 6pm and in four of so hours we had only made it about one-third of the way. In the ensuing rush, I managed to loose a pair of Oakleys. Kate also managed to loose my shirt. We only made it back into Vang Vieng with minutes to spare and with the sun long gone. Top tip: if you’re planning on going tubing, make sure you keep track of the time!

Other than the wonderful disregard for any health & safety, there is nothing about this town that has any of the laid-back character of Laos. The town has sold its soul for a quick buck, which is such a pity because it could be so much more than it is, although if I was 12 years younger and closer to the average age of the visitors here, I would probably absolutely love it.