Last Weekend in Laos – Vang Vieng

Our final weekend in Laos. How could it have come to the end so soon? Oh wait…it didn’t. In fact, I have been counting down to this period for a while. I am ready to come home! But that is not the only reason I was looking forward to our final weekend in Laos. Our friends who were visiting from Chiang Mai left Vientiane on Wednesday to spend a few days in Luang Prabang and would then be meeting us in Vang VIeng on Saturday! Zenia and I had been planning this weekend for months and our trip to Vang Vieng signified the end of our travels around Laos as it was the last major place to go in this country.

Vang Vieng is located about 3 ½ hours North of Vientiane and can only be described as the party town of Laos. It is a place of drunkenness and revelry where people go to enjoy caving, kayaking, tubing on Nam Song River with frequent stops at riverside bars for bucket drinking (literally a bucket of an alcoholic beverage), mud volleyball, tug of war, etc. It’s filled with falang, being the place to go for serious drinking (and pot smoking – I do not partake) fun in SE Asia. Zenia and I decided we had to go as it was the last place for us to visit in Laos and would make our travels in this country complete. So when Ellie and Vanessa expressed an interest in going and meeting us there we jumped on the band wagon and headed out.

We decided early on, based on the activities available in Vang Vieng (as we all know, I’m not a drinker, so the alcohol held no appeal for me), we would only spend two days and one night in Vang Vieng, heading back to Vientiane on Sunday afternoon. However, we learned at work on Thursday that we would have Monday off as it was a major Buddhist holiday and we decided to extend our stay one extra night and come home on Monday morning instead. So, we spent our weekend in Vang Vieng, making the 3 ½ trip by bus on Saturday morning and the trip home via minivan on Monday morning.

Zenia and I had packed for our weekend on Friday evening and simply got up on Saturday morning, caught a tuk-tuk to downtown and went to Fruit Heaven for some breakfast. Our breakfast was amazing although a bit of a mistake as the shakes were so good that I drank two! Think about two large fruit shakes and then a 3 ½ hour bus ride. See the problem? Our bus was scheduled to leave for Vang Vieng at 10 am, but in typical Asian-time fashion, didn’t depart until around 11 am. We set out with a bus full of people, mostly European students who just got released for their summer holiday.

The bus ride itself was fairly uneventful. The first half of the trip was an easy drive through the Vientiane valley toward the mountains in the North. At the base of the mountains we made a pit stop for toilets and beverages – a blessing as I was in dire need of a restroom. Well, I have now learned that the further north you go in Laos, the fewer Western toilets you will find. At this particular rest stop we were each charged 1,000 kip to use the facilities which consisted of squatter toilets! I know you have all been waiting for the day when I finally use the more “native toilets” and that day has finally come. On Saturday afternoon at approximately 12:43 pm yours truly used a squatter toilet and I have to say…it wasn’t so bad.

The restrooms consisted of a dozen small rooms housing individual toilets within a large warehouse type structure. Each room was formed of plywood thrown up to form three walls and a door to cover the fourth wall. I walked into the “restroom,” closed the door behind me and surveyed the scene. I was standing in a small space with a garbage can to my right and a bucket filled with water on my left. I hung my backpack on a nail next to the door and contemplated my options. There was no way to avoid using the bathroom here (I did have TWO shakes earlier after all), so I would just have to suck it up. The “toilet” was set into the floor so that it was flush with the ground level. It is a roundish oval shape with places for your feet on either side that have grippers for the soles of your shoes. After using the “toilet” (I’ll leave that to your imagination), you use the bucket of water to “flush.” You simply continue to fill up the bowl of the toilet with water, which flushes the toilet. It’s all very interesting…and something I don’t really want to do again. I think I’ll just stick with my western toilets in the future. :)

Meanwhile in Luang Prabang…Our friends had departed Luang Prabang at 7 am to begin the 6 hour drive south to Vang VIeng. At the halfway point of their trip they ran into their first landslide. Laos had seen a huge deluge of water for the past week and a half and the result was horrendous landslides in the mountains. While on the bus we received a text update informing us that they planned to “wait it out” and in 3 hours or so it had been cleared by some locals and the long stream of traffic was back on their way. Ten minutes later they ran into their second landslide. And in this way their day continued…an unending series of landslides on the road to Vang Vieng.

Back on the Road from Vientiane…We got back on the road and began our ascent into the mountains. The road was a vicious serpentine that slithered through the mountains and induced many to sickness as the bus drivers are insane and take curves at a disastrous rate, passing other vehicles on blind turns, etc. The mountains more than made up for this, however. It was stunning. Every available inch of land was covered with thick forests except near the road where small villages sprang out of the landscape. Rice fields cultivated by the local farmers surrounded the immediate roadside, curving and turning into the base of the hillside, no longer the perfectly formed rectangular patches that can be found in the valleys of Laos, but odd triangular, curving shapes. The forests were a thick jungle, deserving of the title of rain forest, which made our drive beautiful and made the time pass more quickly.

Our bus arrived in Vang Vieng at around 2:30 pm. For each of our previous trips Zenia and I planned everything out, having our guesthouses booked ahead of time, a car/tuk-tuk ready to get us at the bus station, and activities planned for every moment of our trip, but this is not possible or advisable for Vang Vieng. Instead, going with the flow and figuring it out once you arrive is the suggested method of travel to this party town. Therefore, when we stepped off the bus in Vang Vieng we were without housing and without a clue. Luckily this was not a problem. The true town (for locals) is located at a bit of a distance from what is considered Vang Vieng today and the modern falang city center of Vang Vieng is covered in tourists, guesthouses, restaurants, and bars, a haven for the cheap backpacker. Zenia and I began to walk around the town in search for a guesthouse and after 10 minutes of walking had seen the entire town. Yup. It’s smaller than Luang Prabang.

On the Road From LP…The *ahem* interesting travel day continued for our beleaguered friends. At each landslide they were forced to get out of the bus and walk across the landslide so as not to weigh the bus down further during its crossing of the half cleared soil on the road. At one point they even had to push the bus across the landslide.

Now in Vang Vieng…We finally settled on a guesthouse that had air-conditioned rooms with two beds for 80,000 kip per night ($5 per person per night!), the average rate for an average room. After dropping off our bags in our room, we set out to take a closer look at the town and explore before our friends arrived. As I mentioned, the town is very small, consisting of about four blocks square. One of the highlights of the town is the cafes and restaurants. All open to the air, they consist of raised cubbies where patrons recline against pillows and cushions with tables over their legs and watch TVs that are mounted on the walls. These TVs play a continuous stream of Friends reruns (a very popular American TV show for those of you who aren’t up on pop culture) giving us our first taste of American TV in almost three months! Zenia and I were hooked (and hungry). We curled up in one of the booths, ordered some lemon juice and food and proceeded to watch a couple hours of Friends.

Meanwhile, three hours from Vang Vieng…A final landslide on the road from LP had proved too much for the bus and it was unable to go on. Our friends, not to be deterred, bargained with a van driver at the scene to drive them the rest of the way and for a mere 100,000 kip ($12) they were once again on the road to VV at 6 pm.

Back in VV…After the latest update from our LP crew, Zenia and I decided to head back to our guesthouse, clean up a bit, and then go out for some dinner. We ate at a bakery restaurant that was recommended by Lonely Planet and quite good. After dinner, while waiting for our group to arrive, we wasted time watching more Friends and relaxing. At 9:45 pm we began heading back to our guesthouse to continue the wait when a green shape ahead of us began to scream and then became a blur as it ran towards us. The green blob threw itself into our arms and we realized it was Vanessa who was nearly crying with her relief at being in Vang Vieng, almost 15 hours after she had set out from LP.

Our group was reunited and it felt good. Added to the four of us was Chris, also an intern in Chiang Mai, and a friend of his traveling in SE Asia, Lorena. I don’t think I have ever seen a more bedraggled and tired bunch. We collected our group and set off for our guesthouse so they could rent two rooms and shower. At 10:30 pm we set off again to find food for the LP group. The evening ended early as we were all quite tired and Zenia and I had a big day planned for Sunday. During our walk around the city earlier in the day we had stopped at a travel agency and booked a tour of caving, trekking and tubing for the next day, which would start at 9:30 am Sunday morning. Now prepare yourselves for some fun times tomorrow, because that is when the real adventures started!