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Vang Vieng, Laos

Posted on September 10, 2014 by Heather

I’m not quite sure how to describe this place, I said in the tubing post that I was pleasantly surprised, after seeing some more of the town, I realise this was a major understatement!
We initially planned on staying 2 days in Vang Vieng, seeing it as a means of breaking up the journey to get up to Luang Prabang, we stayed 6 days and were still sad to leave. I can’t quite put my finger on what it was but we loved it, maybe it was because I had such low expectations. It has so much more to offer than tubing. We enjoyed hiking, biking, kayaking and caving and still we probably only touched the surface of what’s on offer.
Here’s a few pics from our wonderful stay in the adventure town of Vang Vieng.
‘Whopping restaurant’, a Japanese run restaurant that do amazing burgers!

Tham Chang cave and tranquil blue lagoon, we arrived too late to go into the cave but we made the most of the bright blue water!

Biking west of town in search of the ‘official’ blue lagoon. We first stopped off for a climb up Pha Ngeun. A sweaty 500m climb (about 400m of which was upwards!) lead to incredible views of the surrounding valleys.

We then heading towards the blue lagoon…

Arriving at the ‘Blue Lagoon’, we were disappointed in it’s ‘blueness’, especially after the beautiful waters of Tham Chang the previous day but the spectacular Tham Pou Kham cave more than made up for it…

When we returned to day light, people had started to jump into the [not so] blue lagoon with some hilarious results…

On the return journey, after a lot of rain we came across a group of men struggling to get a truck out of the mud…so Matt and another tourist gave a helping hand…

That evening, we had dinner at AMD restaurant, rated 1st on TripAdvisor, we’d walked by a few times but it had always been empty so we were reluctant to go in but we plucked up the courage and went for it.

It was a decent meal, nice smoothies but I’m not convinced of it’s number 1 spot, Whopping burger was superior for me.

The following day we went kayaking to see some more caves. We went tubing in Pha Thao cave, this is not for the faint hearted, you basically drag yourself along by clinging onto a rope, hoping that you don’t crash into the sides with too much force. The distance you travel inside the cave is entirely dependant on season and amount of rainfall, sometimes the water level is just too high that you don’t actually fit. Was a fun experience but certainly wouldn’t be for everyone.

We had a short stop at the Elephant cave (Xayyalam Cave Temple), a bit of a disappointing stop really, a small hole in the wall of a mountain that has been turned into a temple housing a Buddha footprint. Named ‘Elephant Cave’ because of a rock inside that looked a bit like an elephant – not enough like an elephant though as they decided to add some man-made tusks to make it a bit more obvious!

We then kayaked about 10km, all the way home down the Nam Song river (the same one we’d previously tubed down).

That evening we witnessed some incredible gymnastic feats whilst watching some everyday people play a game of Takor . (It’s known as a lot of different things throughout South East Asia, but it’s basically kick volleyball) AMAZING!

Just before we caught our bus to Luang Prabang, we had a chat with a French lady who moved to Vang Vieng 4 months ago and works in a coffee/cheesecake shop, she said that it is low low season in September – the worst month of the year for businesses as it is so quiet so it could be completely different (and how I dreaded) at other times of the year when more tourists are around.

Categories: Laos | Tags: AMD, biking, blue lagoon, buddha footprint, cave, cycling, Elephant, hiking, jump, kick volleyball, lagoon, Luang Prabang, Nam Song, Pha Nguen, Pha Thao, stuck, Takor, Tham Chang, Tham Pou Kham, truck, tubing, valley, vang vieng, whopping, Xayyalam | Leave a comment

Tubing – Vang Vieng, Laos

Posted on September 6, 2014 by Heather

Just back from an afternoon of tubing down the Nam Song River in Vang Vieng, Laos. I have to say, I was pleasantly surprised! I’d read a lot about it, from the horror stories of what it was like pre-2012, like the number of deaths (27 in 2011) and countless injuries from the drunken revellers jumping into shallow water completely intoxicated to the complete opposite of more recent years, about many of the bars being closed (read: burned) down and hardly any tourists bothering to visit any more.

What we found today I think was a happy medium, there was a decent sized crowd, happily having a couple of drinks but not pushing their luck and everyone enjoying the cruise down the river. There were 4 bars en route (I think) but they’re all really close to the start. Once we’d been dropped off by the TukTuk at the first bar, we had our obligatory free shot, had a bracelet attached to our wrists for good luck (err….), hung around, had a quick game of beer pong and collected our tubes ready for the adventure to begin, No sooner had we tucked our legs up over the side of the tube were we being thrown a bottle on a string ready to be dragged ashore into the next bar, for us this was too soon, we wanted to get into the swing of things. The other bars came along thick and fast too although only one of them shouted over and offered us the bottle on a string to be hauled in. We passed this one by too as it seemed a bit too quiet and we’d hoped they were lying and just trying to rake in the customers with their hand painted “last bar” sign…they weren’t lying.

So we just carried on, after an hour of floating, spinning and splashing our way down river we saw the sign telling us that that’s where the tubing ended, obviously we found ourselves across river from the way out so had to fight against the current, after a bit of frantic paddling we made it across and finished off the afternoon lazing in a hammock.

NB: We visited in rainy season (early September) – not that you’d ready tell but this meant the river was fairly full and therefore pretty fast flowing, I think in drier seasons, the time it takes to get down the river can easily double as the current slows down. This is something worth keeping in mind if you’re planning on getting your tube deposit back for returning it before 6pm.

Categories: Laos | Tags: bars, beer pong, burnt, closed, deaths, drink, floating, hammock, injuries, jump, Nam Song, rainy season, river, shot, shots, tubing, TukTuk, vang vieng | Leave a comment

Vientiane, Laos

Posted on September 1, 2014 by Heather

I can’t remember the name of the bus company but we caught the bus to Vientaine from outside the Friendly Backpackers hostel on Nguyen huu huan street, Hanoi, Vietnam. We travelled on a Monday which meant we went on an old bus (double sleeper seats on each side rather than 3 singles AND no toilet! – old bus on Monday, Wednesday, Friday and Sunday but none of the people selling you tickets will tell you that, the new bus has a toilet and will be like the other sleeper buses in Vietnam travels on Tuesdays, Thursdays and Saturdays). A guy came to meet us at our hotel and we then had to follow/chase him to the backpackers place to get a minibus for half an hour to then get on the big bus, they took our passports (so keep an eye on who takes it!), he returned and then hurried all the westerners onto the bus.

We made a couple of stops out of the city, one which was considerably longer than the others… It was getting dark and we stopped pretty much in the middle of nowhere. Up until this point people had been getting on with the odd suitcase, bag of fruit and boxed fan and the bus was fairly full. However this new group were shuttling stuff backwards and forwards in ‘moving house’ fashion. With all but the kitchen sink on the bus, and it was so full they had to take all the luggage out of the hold and put the backpackers luggage on top, then on came the pair of mattresses… Now officially full!

It was long old journey – pretty much 24hrs (plenty of water and snacks needed), we made a fair few stops but that’s probably more to do with the lack of toilet, so if you get the new bus you might be shut in for longer, a stop for dinner then a stop at the border for a few hours (there’s a cafe there that does pho if you fancy an early breakfast, it’s 5000VND to use the loo). We got there around 4am but the border doesn’t open until 7am, they didn’t wake people up until about half 6 though, when they told everyone to get their passports stamped to leave Vietnam (US$1). We then walked a muddy kilometre to the Laos border to get an entry stamp and visa. We then got back on the bus for the final part of the journey to Vientiane.

We stopped off in Vientiane solely as a stop off in order to get our Thai visas (The visa exemption criteria changes often so make relevant phone calls and check the Thai embassy website or just get a visa while at home to be safe! Although the .gov site says you can have 30 days on entry when you enter by land or air, while we were there entry via land was only valid for 15 days, by air was 30 days. You can only get a Thai visa from certain places, the only place in Laos was Vientiane.

There isn’t an awful lot to the Laos capital apart from food, as we were only there for a few days while waiting for our visas, we thought we’d get by!

Our first meal was a bit of a let down, Ai Capone, a highly recommended (according to Tripadvisor) but overpriced Italian restaurant. We were tempted in by the offer of a ‘Special set menu’ which turned out to only be valid at lunchtime…it was 7pm. As we’d already sat down an ordered drinks, we stayed. The food looked good and tasted fine but I think we were just expecting a bit more.

The food we experienced the following night (and the one after that!) more than made up for it! I’m not even sure that the place had a name but if you ever find yourself in Vientiane, you have to try it! You’ll find it on Rue Francois Ngin, about half way down – it’s the place with amazing looking and smelling food outside, red plastic chairs and lots of very friendly staff! It has a red and white marquee style roof, warning, when it rains heavily – choose your seats wisely, you may get wet!

We went searching for some hidden beauty of Vientiane… We went to the top of Patuxai to see views of the city, see the world peace gong and experienced a weird halo effect sunset… A few temples and the obligatory market were also on our to see list!