Vang Vieng!

Vang Vieng is a beautiful town, surrounded by limestone cliffs carved by a river. First up when we arrived it was quite late so we hit the bars, where I bought too many buckets. The next day we continued the drinking while tubing down the river. I was still feeling a little under the weather from the night before, so didn't drink too severely, although most of the bars offer free shots of lao-lao, the extremely cheap ethanol-like Laotian liquid. The whole idea was absolutely awesome, with really high rope swings into the river everywhere, and tubing down the river was great fun. I didn't realise beforehand that the focus was mainly on drinking in the bars along the river rather than the actual tubing - I had more fun floating sedately down the river rather than the doof-doof bars filled with highly inebriated teens. Guess it's a sign that I'm getting old, although if I was in the mood I think it would have been a great experience and I would have joined the ranks of over-drunk party-goers. Also I couldn't get past the feeling that drunk tourists were scarring what would be a beautiful town. The locals seem rightly unhappy at what has happened to their once-pristine town.


With my wrinkly old-age maturity cast into sharp contrast, we decided to go for a bicycling trip to some caves the next day rather than any more brain-cell destroying activities. The first part of the bike ride was quite taxing because my seat was at the lowest possible setting. After 7kms I found a place to fix the seat. With the much higher setting, riding was easy and I arrived at the caves 13 km from town in a much better mood. The first cave, the Elephant cave, was barely an excuse for a cave - more like an overhang on a cliff with a big buddha in it. The next two caves, Tham Hoi and Tham Loup (Tham means cave) were much better. Tham Hoi burrowed 2kms into the mountain, although it was quite similar for the first kilometre so we turned back at the halfway point. The cave was great and quite spooky, especially with only the meagre light of a torch to prevent ankle-turning missteps. Apparently spirits protect these caves, although I was unable to get the guide to elaborate on this. Tham loup was only 200metres long, although it had much bigger caverns and cool crawl-throughs, as well as a big hole in the ground to avoid.



On the way back I came off the bike on the gravel, grinding up my right knee and elbow and getting gravel deep inside the cuts. After a fun escapade scraping out the gravel from the wound and a good burn from the alcohol, we were on our way again. We stopped by the organic mulberry farm 4km from town. While it would have been tranquil before the tubing, it's right on the edge of the bars now, so doof-doof music rang throughout the place. However they did have delicious food; the eggplant dip was magnificent (maybe better than Baba Ganoush!); as was their goat's cheese. The honey and mulberry shake was a treat for the tastebuds, too!