We took a 6 hour minibus ride through the mountains from Luang Prabang to the small town of Vang Vieng. Vang Vieng is a little town on the river which has become a big backpackers stop and party town in recent years. It's in a beautiful area, jagged limestone mountains and amazingly green forest. But that's not why most people go there. The main draw is the tubing and the bars.
Knowing this and assuming it wasn't really going to be what we were looking for, we only planned for about a day there. When we arrived, we were amazed at the beauty of the place. No one we talked to had mentioned that, only the tubing.
Our first evening there we met up with dome other people in our minibus group: two Brits, an Aussie and a Kiwi. They were all great people and we ended up hanging out with them the whole time we were there. That first night we decided to check out some of the nightlife and headed to one of the many riverside" bars" (which is really just an outdoor area with some tables, a bar and a DJ booth. We hung out drinking and dancing and were still in bed before midnight- arterial this is Laos; early to bed, early to rise.
The next day we were disappointed to wake up to buckets of rain dumping on the village- no tubing today. So our little clan made our way to one of the many restaurants to catch some breakfast and try to wait out the rain. The majority of the restaurants around town have these elevated platforms covered in pillows where you can lounge away your day. They have low tables on the platforms and no walls around the restaurant so it's the perfect place to relax and watch the rain fall. And watch Friends. Fir some reason, every place seems to have obtained a DVD of Friends, Family Guy or The Simpsons and just play them on repeat all day long. It's kind of funny but sure was nice while we had nothing else to do.
The rain eventually let up but it was still too cool out to hang out in the river. So Jason and I decided instead to walk back toward the mountains and see what we would find. We saw some signs pointing the way to caves so we followed them. It ended up being a great little walk, even though I was wearing flip flops through the muddiest roads. We wandered through farmers fields, around herds of cattle and past playing children. We even came across an entire field completely full of four leaf clovers (there's one in my book for safe keeping)! We had to walk over a tiny rickety bridge made of bamboo with a sign reading "only one at a time"- a little scary. Finally we came to where the farmlands end and the jungle begins. You could almost stand with one foot in a field and one in the jungle it was that clear cut. We got into the dense jungle and it immediately got darker and we could hear birds chirping and monkies howling. We felt a world away from the party town we had just came from. We made it to the cave but didn't go in as it was too dark to see a thing. But it was a great adventure getting there.
The next day we did the tubing thing. It was fun fir a day, but I don't know how people stay there fir weeks doing the same thing everyday. But it wasn't really tubing, more just hanging out at bars along the river and occasionally swimming from one to the next. The best part was watching people fly off the giant rope swings and ohhhing and ahhhing at their tricks/belly flops.
We eventually tried to tube the 3 km back to town but the river was too shallow and it was getting too late so we took a yuk yuk the rest of the way.
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