Vang Vieng - Crowds, Crooks and Caves.

Hello again!

Sometimes, it's the little things that entertain us the most when we travel. Look closely at the top right picture on the sign below. This sign was in the toilets at a bus stop.

We've seen a couple of these type of signs, but I wasn't able to take photos of the others. At a viewpoint once, there was a a sign that very clearly showed the way to the men's urinals. It was a stick figure of a man with a stick figure penis pointed at the urinal. At the office building where Fred Hollows is based - a large, new high-rise building in Vientiane, I went into the toilets and one sign there clearly meant "No Sex in the Toilets". It had stick figures of a couple have sex, doggie-style! Amazing.

Back on the road and, once again, getting to our destination was interesting! We caught a typical tourist mini van and the windows were tinted really dark, so John and I sat in the front where we could at least see a bit. The van picked us all up at our hotels and a group of about six young French backpackers were the last of the dozen or so people to get on so they got the seats at the back.

When we got to our destination, Vang Vieng, we checked into our room and I realised my bag had been broken into! The zip had been forced open and the contents had been rummaged through but nothing was stolen. All our valuables stay with us, not in our packs.

So how could my bag have been broken into when it was inside the minivan? Sadly, there are warnings in our guidebook that the most likely thieves we will come across are our fellow travellers. The French backpackers up the back had three hours to reach over the back seat and get into bags. Admittedly, the van was unlocked at a break we took at a food stop and there were heaps of people there, however it's unlikely anyone could have got into the van then as someone would have seen them. I've always felt like travellers take care of each other and this has dealt a blow to my trust in them now.

We were looking forward to Vang Vieng. In the noughties it was a huge party destination. Young tourists would get drunk or stoned and float down rivers on inner tyre tubes where party bars lined up the drinks and drugs. So many young Aussies drowned or died though that the Australian government put pressure on to get the place cleaned up. This clean up happened a few years ago so we were looking forward to seeing this beautiful place without the party crowd.

When we first decided to come to Laos, I felt a bit like we were exploring unchartered waters. I thought that nobody else had heard of the place. It turns out that every man, woman and dog comes here, I just didn't know it! John had some idea though. We arrived at Vang Vieng and were greeted by tourist bedlam. The couple of main streets were crammed with bars, restaurants and accommodation and every shop had multiple signs selling tours or bus trips. You could barely see the buildings for the plethora of signs. It felt like there were far more young backpackers here than locals. Doof-doof music blared from pubs til all hours and Chinese and Korean tourists wandered around with huge cameras. We quickly realised it's not our kind of place.

We were keen on tubing down the river though. We've only ever done this once, years ago, and it was great fun. Sadly, it's dry season and the water is very shallow. We heard it wasn't very good so we opted out. We then thought we'd kayak instead but you can't just hire a kayak - you have to take a tour. Some of the tours sounded interesting - tubing through caves, kayaking and trekking - however you have to do it in groups and the photos show lines of tourists all following each other like sheep. There are several bridges over the river and we've watched convoys of kayaks coming through. This really isn't our scene at all.

Many tourists swim or tube here, but we keep seeing reasons why we shouldn't go in the rivers. We've seen buffalo shitting in them elsewhere and here, the town extended upstream of the main tubing area. Subsequently, people did things like washed their vehicles here. 

Interestingly, we met people who love it here but the one and only Aussie we met here hated it. I think it's just a cultural thing. We Aussies like our space and our peace!

Here's an example of how tacky the tourism can get here,

We thought about leaving the town early but we had a great hotel and the restaurants were wonderful. We plan to do more walking further north and we needed to get fit for that so we decided to stay and do lots of walking instead.

On our first evening we found a simple shack that had a great view of the sunset. By wandering around, we eventually found the owners - an eccentric Norwegian guy leftover from the hippy days and his Lao wife who sung songs all the time. We could pretty much only order beer and soda but it was great sitting there. Over the four nights, we met a Canadian lady, Terri, and an English guy, John. We all enjoyed sitting there having a drink and watching the spectacular sunsets. Balloons often added a splash of colour.

The mornings here were cool and we had to put jumpers on a couple of times! The days were wonderfully pleasant, temperature-wise.

The morning market was right near us and it was one of the more interesting ones we've seen, mostly because it was so local. They grow enormous beans here!

Everyone uses these short brooms. They seem to be made from grasses.

From our room we could see a small hill with a flag on top of it. We thought this would make a good walking destination so we headed towards it. We had a lovely walk through dry rice paddies. It was such a pleasant change from the busy, dirty town. The people who owned the hill had set up a little stand and we had to pay a dollar or two to climb the hill and see inside a cave there. The cave was close to the bottom and was a bit of fun.

We started to cimb the hill and it was quite challenging! They had built simple ladders to scale rocky sections. We had to watch what we were doing.

The view from the top was lovely but a bit hazy, which is so typical of all the places we have been on this trip.

This is karst country again, where giant ridges of limestone stick up dramatically from the ground.

The next day we walked to a viewpoint further from town. There were no tracks there so we had to walk along the road. It was awful. One of the big things to do here is to hire a buggy and do a circuit, taking in swimming holes and caves. These buggies are really noisy. Hundreds of them were lined up at various points along the road and groups of tourists, mostly Korean or Chinese, would hire them. They'd all have an introductory talk then they'd set off, all following each other along the road. They drove us mad.

We got to the hill where we wanted to climb to the top for the view and had to laugh at this sign. 80kgs might be overweight for a Laotian, but most 80kg Caucasions can climb this hill easily! I'd also like to think I could climb it when I'm 70!

It was a long climb but the views were great, although quite murky.

Our last walk was the best! There was a nearby cave that had a lovely walk to it. We wandered along a simple track lined with towering karst through beautiful forest to get there.

We had to pay a couple of dollars to go into the cave. We didn't know if we would need a torch and hadn't brought one with us. John had the foresight to ask the ticket guy and he lent us a head torch.

We entered the cave and were glad to have the torch as it was pitch black. We soon realised we needed a second light so we used the phone light. We picked our way over amazing formations.

A few rocks had crystals in them that reflected our lights so they sparkled! Cool!

With only our torches, we worked our way deeper and deeper into the cave. We were clearly following a seasonal underground river and, in places, huge holes had formed under the limestone, leaving only a thin crust that we could easily fall through. We learned to be careful!

Stalagtites and stalagmites were frequent and we saw some new ones forming. The flash on my camera is showing way more than we could see at the time!

Every now and then we'd come across a ladder and we'd have to climb up or down sections. It was much harder than it looks here, as we were doing it all in the dark.

At one stage we had to cross this ladder over bit of a drop. Easier said than done using only torches!

We kept going for what we estimated was about one kilometre. We felt very adventurous, all alone in a cave with no idea of how long it was. It felt a bit Indiana Jones-ish. Just as we reached a point where the cave suddenly shrunk to about one metre high, John's headtorch started to fade a bit. We decided that was a good spot to turn around. If we got stuck in there with no light, we would have had to just sit and wait for someone to find us as it was too dangerous to wander around there in the dark.

We retraced our steps and finally we saw daylight. We had made it without losing our lights! We emerged from the cave to find a group of tourists about to go in. Oh well - so much for feeling like we were intrepid explorers! We had an absolute ball doing this though!

Back in town we had some wonderful meals. The town's Thai restaurant was amazing. People queued for ages to get in.

Van Vieng was once a druggie haven. Whoever wrote this menu doesn't seem to have realised the drug scene has moved on. They're combining both alcohol and drugs - haha.

On our last night we sat with Terri at our usual wonky bar and this balloon came right over the top of us. It was so close!

That small mountain directly beneath the sun and balloon is the one we climbed on our second day.

Each evening, just after dark, burning lanterns would start drifting overhead. People release these as some kind of good luck thing I think. We found them being released by tourists. It was quite beautiful.

When we first arrived in Vang Vieng, we were so put off by the busy town. I'm really glad we decided to stay because we did end up having a good time.

Having said that, I've come to the realisation that south-east Asia isn't really my thing. The pollution, the dust and the endless streams of plastic that line the roads are really off-putting. 

Plastic is such a problem here. Whenever anyone buys anything, it is automatically put into a new plastic bag. We see people buy bunches of bananas - they go into a plastic bag. People buy a baguette - it goes into another plastic bag. Even a plastic bottle of water goes into a plastic bag! We've been on songtaews where people have unwrapped food and just tossed the plastic wrappers out. There is no recycling in most places and many don't even have a rubbish pickup. All rubbish either gets burnt or thrown wherever it's convenient. We're getting a bit sick of it.

the Chinese are becoming far more prevalent in many countries we've visited in the last decade or so. From a commercial point of view they're building or buying infrastructure and controlling sectors of businesses. 

In Cambodia, we rode our bikes along a beautiful new road with a huge drain in the middle. The Chinese built it. And what do they do with the huge drain? They collect rainwater and sell it back to the Cambodian farmers! In New Guinea they owned all the supermarkets. In Australia, they're buying our electricity supplies, water rights and food sources. 

They're also becoming more prevalant in tourism. In Laos, they're building a railway line that will run from Shanghai to Bangkok. 
It goes via Vientiane, Van Vieng and Luang Prabang, Laos' three biggest tourist destinations. As soon as that train line is completed, Chinese tourists are going to descend on this area in droves. They're already here travelling in large groups. They were by far the most common tourists in Vang Vieng. 

I think so many places are going to change dramatically over the next decade as Chinese tourism really hits its straps. I feel that places like these interesting Laos towns are going to struggle to maintain their own cultures. See these places while you can!

That's enough ranting from me.

Hooroo,
Heather and John