The one on Vang Vieng and tubing

Where were I… Oh… My last post is from Vientiane… So… 5 hours on a local bus, one throwing up lady and one  collective peeing in the forest later (apparently the fact that I also had to pee was really funny for the Lao woman) I arrived to Vang Vieng.

Once upon a time there was this little village called Vang Vieng.  Located beside the Nam Song river, surronded by limestone mountains with houndreds of caves around… It simply looked like a paradise. Apart from stunning setting it had extremely friendly locals. By the way the first bricked house was build here in 1998 so imagine how it had to looked like. Slowly after Loas opened it’s border foreginers started to come. More or less 10 years ago tubing kicked in (floating down the river on a huge floating ring – the tube). The current wasn’t that strong so it was very relaxing and as I said the scenery was just the best! If you wanted to buy a beer locals would throw a rope and pull you to the bank so you could sell it for you. More and more people started coming. The place became a legend. And then somebody had that brilliant idea of constructing a little wooden bar on the river side…

How it looks now? It is madness… Tubing means basciclly getting  from one bar to another. Alcohol is super cheap (the infamous buckets) or even free. So most of the people never get past bar number 5 🙂  There are all those crazy competition for example you have to climb a bamboo stick to get a free bucket. I’ve seen quite a few bruises afterwards… To make it more fun swings (some very high) and zip lines were installed. By the way I learnt very fast that you had to let go before you get to the end of a zip line or you would land on your butt… Rather unplasant… So now the town changed completely. Houndreds of guesthouses, bars/restaurants showing Friends or Family Guy, food stalls with pankes  and sandwitches … Again houndreds of bars… It is a mayhem. I took it relatively easy but if you are here hangover is inevitable… It is such a shame what happend to the town. I don’t even want to imagine what Lao people think about Westeners.  One thing I have to admit though – I had a such a great time there! 🙂