Day two of the vang vieng tubing experience began in much the same fashion as the first. Heading out into the ghost town that is vang vieng before 11am in the morning you could have heard a pin drop as the previous nights exploits take their toll on the temporary population. The town itself is ok, it's relatively compact and filled to the brim with only two kinds of establishments, shops selling the obligatory vang-vieng merchandise (vests, fake ray bans etc) and bar-come restaurants. In fact these places are famous in their own right due to an odd insistence for playing either friends or family guy non-stop, 24 hours a day, all on big screens. We aren't just talking about a couple of bars here, we are talking about possibly fifty of them, all next to each other essentially providing the same freakish service. Thing is, along with exactly the same menus, are catering, in their eyes anyway, for what westerners are used to back home. It's a strange proposition that these people think that all we do back home is watch cartoons and eat cheese toasties.
Anyway, as we prepared to head down for more tubing fun it started to dawn on me, with a little help from mum, just how much my brother Ady would have loved this kind of thing. You could just imagine him now, hands flayling, head stuck in one of the whisky buckets, dancing like he'd put his hands and feet in a campfire and was trying to cool them down. I think in a way he was there, he must have been to see me struggling to get to grips with quite possibly the worst music and worlds thickest people all in one spot. You see I'm trying not to be one of those bitter snobs stood on the sidelines, we actually met some top people on both days, but it's hard to imagine how some of these lads got here if they have the inability to produce speech. Anyway, despite some initial sadness we attempted to lift ourselves by ordering a 'bucket' of gin and tonic. A classy green bucket full of half a bottle of gin and seemingly, nothing much else, after we gave ady a good old toast the bucket, in about thirty minutes, was gone. As the day progressed and as we loosened up both the people and the music started to become intoxicating. After a blur of five hours dancing on a bamboo dancefloor, almost in the middle of the jungle, we found ourselves in the back of a tuk-tuk with two other Aussies sat discussing our impressive moustaches in aid of Movember, to promote testicular cancer awareness. Shell, alas, had shaved hers off just a couple of days before...
Back in town we drank a couple more beers before eating something (we don't really have any recollection of what it was) before heading back to our room to try and sleep before our seven hour journey up over the mountains towards luang prabang, in the morning.
For some reason, unbeknown to us really, we felt quite apprehensive about coming to vang vieng. We'd heard all the stories and read everything about it before we came so I don't know whether we thought we were too old, wouldn't enjoy it being in a couple or just wasn't our scene. In the end we had a great time. You can see why some people despise it though. You couldn't be further away from Laos if you tried, but for a couple of days it's fine. Besides, when would you be able to ride a tractor inner tube Down a river whilst having whiskey poured into your mouth again? Vang vieng itself has somehow managed to be transformed into some kind of inland magaluf, but with even more mentalists. You have to feel for the locals but by speaking to a few the influx of farang has brought with it great wealth. Read a bit further and you find the town completely unified in how it's all run, by combining all tubing profits into large cartel type organisation. Which in itself, is kind of refreshing. Compared to something like halong bay in Vietnam which has at least a hundred operators all working the route at the same time, destroying any sense of being somewhere far removed.
In the morning we packed in preparation for another bus journey. This time to the UNESCO listed city of luang prabang, 160kms to the north. To get there we would have to drive along, apparently, one of the most beautiful and dramatic roads not just in Laos but anywhere in the world. They would not by lying.
As we headed north out of vang vieng the road continued to wind itself up into the lush green mountains, passing small bamboo houses every now and again that seemed to be held up by nothing more than small twigs that supported the whole structure from falling 1000 feet below. The scenery was, even this early on, quite spectacular. After stopping briefly so the driver could eat we were on our way once more convinced that we had probably gone about half way. Oh how wrong two people can be. The journey was epic, in every way. For eight hours the poor bus wound up and over mountains as large as Ben Nevis but along roads that if were a dog, would be one of those vicious strays with bits of fur and skin missing. As soon as you think you are maybe just a few miles away, because your at the bottom of another valley, the bus begins it's long and arduous journey back over the mountain, all to the collective sighs of the people on the bus.
After seven long and ultimately frustrating hours we arrived in luang prabang in the dark and jumped onto one of the waiting tuk-tuks to take us to our hotel.
We are looking forward to the next few days and what this supposedly beautiful town has to offer. We have also decided to splash out and buy a couple of plane tickets to chiang Mai and the start of our thai adventure.
Mucho lovo, Tommo xxxx
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