Our next stop on the Laos trail was to Vang Vieng. It's a beautiful place, settled right into a valley with huge karst cliffs towering over you and a river running through everything. Quite picturesque indeed. So naturally, it turned into a huge party spot. People start upriver and float down from bar to bar until they're back in town. Now, at one time, I think there were 20-some bars and it was a complete shit-show. Like, 21-year-olds dying of cardiac arrest from drinking too much. Or breaking their necks on a flying fox that goes over the river. However, after enough of these horrible things happened they decided to scale things down a bit. Now it's four bars, and you can't ride a 40 ft flying fox while wasted...because that is a terrible idea. Yet, despite the scaling back, it's still quite a party and the opportunities for messiness were certainly not omitted.
We made it Vang Vieng by bus, and on the way we met four travelling buddies: Eilis (Ireland), Keith (Ireland), Nikola (Scotland) and Ewen (Scotland). They came with us to Pan's, a guesthouse we all ended up staying at. We spent the afternoon chatting about where we'd been travelling, where we were going, what we'd seen along the way. That sort of thing. That night I went for a walk with the girls to the river. They were landing hot air balloons in the river, those crazy buggers.
Such a pretty view from our hostel
The next morning, it was no funny business- time to get tubing! Kidding, of course it took us until noon to get organized. Asking 6 backpackers to do anything in a timely fashion is like herding cats.
Here is our crew
I could narrate the experience bar by bar, but why take away from the magic? We had a great time, there may have been a mud-pit/volleyball court at the last bar and it got pretty real.
Next up- Luang Prabang!
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