Vientiane and Vang Vieng
Well we spent a full week in Vientiane. It is a nice city but my perception of it kind of soured toward the end. Once it gets dark the streets fill up with people trying to sell opium. They are all there during the day as well but for some reason once it gets dark they start approaching you. There were tuk tuk drivers who we walked past four or five times during the day and they didnt even look twice at us but then would suddenly be so interested in us once the sun went down. Well not us exactly, they were much more interested in Luke than in me (not that I minded!).
We spent most of the week eating. Vientiane has the most varied bunch of restaurants we have seen since we left home and the quality of the food was amazing. We ate a lot of delicious french food and we found a great little restaurant call the Full Moon Cafe where we would spend hours lounging around drinking coffee and reading our books.
Once our visa stuff was all organised we caught the bus from Vientiane to Vang Vieng. The trip took about 3 and a half hours. Previously when travelling we have caught local buses and we have always been the only farang on board. I spent a lot of time wondering how all the other tourists got from town to town because there were always so many of them but we never ran into anyone on the buses. Well this time we booked a bus directly through our guesthouse and lo and behold there were the tourists! It was just a minibus and there was only one local on board (and i think he actually worked for the bus company!).
The trip was really nice. Vang Vieng is just stunning!! for the first half of the trip we drove through little towns, pretty similar to the streets of Vientiane but during the second half of the trip we alternated between villages and country side. In all of the villages there would be a group of women showering at a communal shower (in sarongs) and groups of children playing what looked like a combination of volleyball and soccer. There was a volleyball net and a group of kids on either side but instead of hitting the ball over with their hands they would kick it or headbutt it over.
The town of Vang Vieng is tiny, right by the Nam Song river and surrounded by mountains, more mountains than I have seen in one place in my entire life! The town is really just a bunch of tourist places, guesthouses and restaurants and tour operators, and the place is absolutely CRAWLING with tourists, more so than Ko Samui or Phuket. Without the tourists I dont think there would be much here at all. Our bus pulled up right outside the Malany Guesthouse and we go a room there for $4 US a night. When we arrived it was already dark so in the morning when we woke up we were bowled over by the view, the balcony of our guesthouse looks out over a beautiful mountain range, it is just gorgeous!
On our first day in Vang Vieng we didnt get up to anything exciting, we ate breakfast and had a look around town then hid in our room from the heat for a while. We spent the late afternoon/early evening at one of the tv bars here. Such a strange concept but its actually pretty great. The tv bars have wooden day beds set up with a mattress and pillows to lay on and a small table in the middle where you can rest your food and drinks. At the front of the room there are two tvs playing old Friends episodes (or sports, depending on which bar you go to). We just lay there for hours drinking cold cokes and watching tv. Its strange because its something I would never do at home but its really relaxing and comforting for some reason. Maybe because we dont have to concentrate on what they are saying lol!
Yesterday we did a tour. It was a beautiful day for it, we got picked up at 9.35 (only 5 minutes late, its nice to not be running on thai time anymore!) and we drove for about an hour along the river and up towards the mountains. There were only five of us on the tour, another couple - the girl was irish and the boy was spanish - and an older german man (and us of course) Our tour operators name was Kau and he was excellent. He spent all day singing and splashing us with water and then singing some more. I dont think I have ever known anyone to be so happy! We kayaked down the river for about an hour or so to start the day. It was a lot of fun, we kayaked through some rapids (though not enough of them for our liking!). The good thing though, was that we were going with the current which made it a lot easier. At least that way we didnt go backwards if we werent rowing!
We stopped at a village after about an hour and parked our kayaks. We walked through the village, past chickens and piglets and turkeys and cows and then through some countryside (and over gates on the strangest ladder things I have ever seen) until we came to a cave opening. The cave was partly submerged, and to get inside we had to get into the river and sit in tubes and then float through the mouth of the cave (lying down - there wasnt much room to get in!). It was dark in the cave and there was a rope for us to pull ourselves along so that we didnt get lost. eventually we came to some dry land and we climbed out of our tubes and left them behind. We had to crawl though a VERY small space. So small that mostly we werent crawling but dragging ourselves through with our elbows. (I wonder if they mention this bit if really big people want to do the tour?). It wasnt very long, probably only fifteen metres but it was a lot of fun! By the time we got to the otherside we were all ridiculously dirty! From there we waded through more water (not higher than our knees though) and walked along more dry bits. There was only one spider that i saw which made me pretty happy (not seeing the spider, but only seeing one) Eventually we came to an inner cavern which was filled with water. We couldnt get through that part (unfortunately) and when we shone our torches inside we could see bats flying around. We sat there for a while and Kau told us some stories about the cave (but he was difficult to understand and I dont really know what he was saying!) then we retraced our steps back through the water and the dry bits and then we crawled back through the little space and then we got back in our tubes and followed the rope halfway back to the cave opening. There was another tunnel about halfway back and instead of heading outside we followed the rope through that one for a while until we found dry land and then we walked through the cave some more (this time wading through some pretty fast flowing water!). Then we headed back out to the sunshine.
Luke and some of the others had a swim (mainly to get themselves clean after crawling through the dirt) and then we walked back to the village by the river to have some lunch. Lunch was pretty unremarkable but we had a great view of some kids playing in the rapids in the river. They would jump in at a certain point and they would all shoot down the river (so fast it was scary) some holding onto a tube (as many as eight at a time on one tube) and some just floating down, they would reach the end of the rapids and would scramble out of the water and run back to the starting point to do it all again. It looked like great fun but we didnt get the chance to give it a go. After lunch we went to see another cave, this time a 'temple cave' it was nice (but so like all the other temple caves) especially the rock in the shape of an elephant near the roof of the cave.
After the second cave we kayaked again. For three hours we kayaked. It was beautiful, breathtaking even. We didnt see anyone for ages but after a while we started seeing more and more people. Pretty soon after we left the village where we had lunch, the novelty of the kayaking had worn off (for me anyway) and so luke did most of the work while I sat there gawking at the mountains and the forest. Pretty soon we started passing these little river bars and after about three of them our guide told us to stop. The bar was really just a wooden platform leaning against the trunk of a tree over the bank of the river. They had 'beer lao' flags and an esky full of big bottles of cold beer. They sold pepsi and other cold drinks and chips and stuff and there was a wooden plank for people to sit on. The main attraction of the bar though was the rope swing and the flying fox.
From the bar there was a ladder going up to a platform, about eight metres from the water, where people could either jump off on the rope swing or do the flying fox. The rope swing was much more popular! Luke and I bought a beer and sat and watched people jumping. We saw many people fall flat on their face when they jumped but couldnt hold their own weight, or couldnt get a grip on the bar properly. It was great fun to watch! A lot of the tour companies here hire out tubes for an afternoon and people just float down the river doing a kind of pub crawl from bar to bar until they get back to town. After we had sat there for about an hour watching people jump luke was itching to have a go (but making excuses not to all at the same time) eventually one of the guys we were with (who was pretty confident that luke wasnt going to jump) said "if you do it, i will".. the look on this guys face when luke said DONE! was priceless!!! So luke and this guy wandered up to the bar and climbed the ladder up to the platform. Both us girlfriends got out our cameras and ran over to the river bank so we could get photographic evidence. We stood there and watched and waited. I joked to her that I thought they were talking each other out of it and then we watched them climbing back down the ladder through the 'bar' and back down to sit with us. It was too 'bleeping' high apparently. higher than it seemed from the ground apparently.
I am making fun but to be fair I didnt jump either so I shouldnt laugh. The contraption was too precarious looking for me.. even though I watched a hundred people jump off it without incident!! yeah yeah excuses excuses.
So! We stayed at the bar drinking and watching people jump for probably an hour and a half then we got back in our kayaks for the home stretch back to Vang Vieng. The other two kayaks in our fleet rowed ahead and we were left behind but we didnt mind too much, we just sat there for most of the time watching the sun getting low over the mountains and letting the current float us back home. We rowed sometimes (when we felt too guilty about being lazy) and eventually we made our way back to the drop off point. We pulled our kayaks up onto the shore where we left them in the hands of kau and we went to the pub with the other people on our tour to have another beer. We watched the sun set (spectacular!) and had a beer and then we all went our separate ways for dinner (and hot showers!).
It was a great day!
We are both sore today, luke more so than me since I spent most of the day NOT kayaking and just sitting there and letting him kayak!!! We plan on spending the afternoon relaxing in front of endless Friends episodes..
oh and there are more photos (of course!)..
bye!!
We spent most of the week eating. Vientiane has the most varied bunch of restaurants we have seen since we left home and the quality of the food was amazing. We ate a lot of delicious french food and we found a great little restaurant call the Full Moon Cafe where we would spend hours lounging around drinking coffee and reading our books.
Once our visa stuff was all organised we caught the bus from Vientiane to Vang Vieng. The trip took about 3 and a half hours. Previously when travelling we have caught local buses and we have always been the only farang on board. I spent a lot of time wondering how all the other tourists got from town to town because there were always so many of them but we never ran into anyone on the buses. Well this time we booked a bus directly through our guesthouse and lo and behold there were the tourists! It was just a minibus and there was only one local on board (and i think he actually worked for the bus company!).
The trip was really nice. Vang Vieng is just stunning!! for the first half of the trip we drove through little towns, pretty similar to the streets of Vientiane but during the second half of the trip we alternated between villages and country side. In all of the villages there would be a group of women showering at a communal shower (in sarongs) and groups of children playing what looked like a combination of volleyball and soccer. There was a volleyball net and a group of kids on either side but instead of hitting the ball over with their hands they would kick it or headbutt it over.
The town of Vang Vieng is tiny, right by the Nam Song river and surrounded by mountains, more mountains than I have seen in one place in my entire life! The town is really just a bunch of tourist places, guesthouses and restaurants and tour operators, and the place is absolutely CRAWLING with tourists, more so than Ko Samui or Phuket. Without the tourists I dont think there would be much here at all. Our bus pulled up right outside the Malany Guesthouse and we go a room there for $4 US a night. When we arrived it was already dark so in the morning when we woke up we were bowled over by the view, the balcony of our guesthouse looks out over a beautiful mountain range, it is just gorgeous!
On our first day in Vang Vieng we didnt get up to anything exciting, we ate breakfast and had a look around town then hid in our room from the heat for a while. We spent the late afternoon/early evening at one of the tv bars here. Such a strange concept but its actually pretty great. The tv bars have wooden day beds set up with a mattress and pillows to lay on and a small table in the middle where you can rest your food and drinks. At the front of the room there are two tvs playing old Friends episodes (or sports, depending on which bar you go to). We just lay there for hours drinking cold cokes and watching tv. Its strange because its something I would never do at home but its really relaxing and comforting for some reason. Maybe because we dont have to concentrate on what they are saying lol!
Yesterday we did a tour. It was a beautiful day for it, we got picked up at 9.35 (only 5 minutes late, its nice to not be running on thai time anymore!) and we drove for about an hour along the river and up towards the mountains. There were only five of us on the tour, another couple - the girl was irish and the boy was spanish - and an older german man (and us of course) Our tour operators name was Kau and he was excellent. He spent all day singing and splashing us with water and then singing some more. I dont think I have ever known anyone to be so happy! We kayaked down the river for about an hour or so to start the day. It was a lot of fun, we kayaked through some rapids (though not enough of them for our liking!). The good thing though, was that we were going with the current which made it a lot easier. At least that way we didnt go backwards if we werent rowing!
We stopped at a village after about an hour and parked our kayaks. We walked through the village, past chickens and piglets and turkeys and cows and then through some countryside (and over gates on the strangest ladder things I have ever seen) until we came to a cave opening. The cave was partly submerged, and to get inside we had to get into the river and sit in tubes and then float through the mouth of the cave (lying down - there wasnt much room to get in!). It was dark in the cave and there was a rope for us to pull ourselves along so that we didnt get lost. eventually we came to some dry land and we climbed out of our tubes and left them behind. We had to crawl though a VERY small space. So small that mostly we werent crawling but dragging ourselves through with our elbows. (I wonder if they mention this bit if really big people want to do the tour?). It wasnt very long, probably only fifteen metres but it was a lot of fun! By the time we got to the otherside we were all ridiculously dirty! From there we waded through more water (not higher than our knees though) and walked along more dry bits. There was only one spider that i saw which made me pretty happy (not seeing the spider, but only seeing one) Eventually we came to an inner cavern which was filled with water. We couldnt get through that part (unfortunately) and when we shone our torches inside we could see bats flying around. We sat there for a while and Kau told us some stories about the cave (but he was difficult to understand and I dont really know what he was saying!) then we retraced our steps back through the water and the dry bits and then we crawled back through the little space and then we got back in our tubes and followed the rope halfway back to the cave opening. There was another tunnel about halfway back and instead of heading outside we followed the rope through that one for a while until we found dry land and then we walked through the cave some more (this time wading through some pretty fast flowing water!). Then we headed back out to the sunshine.
Luke and some of the others had a swim (mainly to get themselves clean after crawling through the dirt) and then we walked back to the village by the river to have some lunch. Lunch was pretty unremarkable but we had a great view of some kids playing in the rapids in the river. They would jump in at a certain point and they would all shoot down the river (so fast it was scary) some holding onto a tube (as many as eight at a time on one tube) and some just floating down, they would reach the end of the rapids and would scramble out of the water and run back to the starting point to do it all again. It looked like great fun but we didnt get the chance to give it a go. After lunch we went to see another cave, this time a 'temple cave' it was nice (but so like all the other temple caves) especially the rock in the shape of an elephant near the roof of the cave.
After the second cave we kayaked again. For three hours we kayaked. It was beautiful, breathtaking even. We didnt see anyone for ages but after a while we started seeing more and more people. Pretty soon after we left the village where we had lunch, the novelty of the kayaking had worn off (for me anyway) and so luke did most of the work while I sat there gawking at the mountains and the forest. Pretty soon we started passing these little river bars and after about three of them our guide told us to stop. The bar was really just a wooden platform leaning against the trunk of a tree over the bank of the river. They had 'beer lao' flags and an esky full of big bottles of cold beer. They sold pepsi and other cold drinks and chips and stuff and there was a wooden plank for people to sit on. The main attraction of the bar though was the rope swing and the flying fox.
From the bar there was a ladder going up to a platform, about eight metres from the water, where people could either jump off on the rope swing or do the flying fox. The rope swing was much more popular! Luke and I bought a beer and sat and watched people jumping. We saw many people fall flat on their face when they jumped but couldnt hold their own weight, or couldnt get a grip on the bar properly. It was great fun to watch! A lot of the tour companies here hire out tubes for an afternoon and people just float down the river doing a kind of pub crawl from bar to bar until they get back to town. After we had sat there for about an hour watching people jump luke was itching to have a go (but making excuses not to all at the same time) eventually one of the guys we were with (who was pretty confident that luke wasnt going to jump) said "if you do it, i will".. the look on this guys face when luke said DONE! was priceless!!! So luke and this guy wandered up to the bar and climbed the ladder up to the platform. Both us girlfriends got out our cameras and ran over to the river bank so we could get photographic evidence. We stood there and watched and waited. I joked to her that I thought they were talking each other out of it and then we watched them climbing back down the ladder through the 'bar' and back down to sit with us. It was too 'bleeping' high apparently. higher than it seemed from the ground apparently.
I am making fun but to be fair I didnt jump either so I shouldnt laugh. The contraption was too precarious looking for me.. even though I watched a hundred people jump off it without incident!! yeah yeah excuses excuses.
So! We stayed at the bar drinking and watching people jump for probably an hour and a half then we got back in our kayaks for the home stretch back to Vang Vieng. The other two kayaks in our fleet rowed ahead and we were left behind but we didnt mind too much, we just sat there for most of the time watching the sun getting low over the mountains and letting the current float us back home. We rowed sometimes (when we felt too guilty about being lazy) and eventually we made our way back to the drop off point. We pulled our kayaks up onto the shore where we left them in the hands of kau and we went to the pub with the other people on our tour to have another beer. We watched the sun set (spectacular!) and had a beer and then we all went our separate ways for dinner (and hot showers!).
It was a great day!
We are both sore today, luke more so than me since I spent most of the day NOT kayaking and just sitting there and letting him kayak!!! We plan on spending the afternoon relaxing in front of endless Friends episodes..
oh and there are more photos (of course!)..
bye!!