After our brief but wonderful time in Vientiane, on December 31st we headed to Vang Vieng, a small town most known for its backpacker culture (read: drinking and drinking-centric activities), which isn’t normally our jam. However, Vang Vieng is also known for fun outdoors activities like river tubing, rock climbing and caves, and we figured that New Year’s Eve is as good of a time as any to embrace a backpacker party scene. I met a Laotian party promoter at the open-air food court in Vientiane who was also on his way to Vang Vieng to go to “the best party in Vang Vieng for New Year’s,” had me take a picture of the party flyer he pulled up on his phone and told me he’d get me a free bucket of frozen cocktail made of Lao Lao (the local whiskey) if I found him at the party. The fact that drink units were measured in “buckets” was a bit of a red flag, but I smiled and promised that I’d definitely say hello if we made it to the party. [Editor’s note: We had some of his frozen cocktails made with Lao Lao and vodka that night at the open-air food court in Vientiane and they were pretty damn delicious (though a bit basic and probably blackout-inducing if consumed in large amounts), so let’s not judge this book too much by its cover.]
As we pulled into Vang Vieng, we immediately could see that the town was pretty different from Vientiane. It was small, with a few dusty main streets that seemed pretty empty, and honestly weren’t particularly appealing. At first glance there wasn’t much charm or local presence, but there also didn’t seem to be much in the way of touristy stuff either. We set off to find our hotel, which was an adventure in its own right. Normally we’ve been booking accommodations 2-3 days in advance as we go, but we’d forgotten until the last minute and apparently almost everything in town was booked for NYE. We’d managed to find a hotel that seemed fine online late the night before, but also forgot to screenshot the location on a map until the very last second and were forced to rely on the name and a maybe-correct pin on a Google Map. It quickly became clear, as we trudged through local back streets wearing our packs and avoiding mud puddles, chickens and motorbikes, that the hotel was not at the pin in the map, and we wandered in circles for a while asking anyone who spoke passable English if they’d ever heard of the hotel name (most had not). We eventually found it, a very nice building that was advertised as “new” but was literally half built, which involved us walking through an active construction site to get to the half of the hotel that was finished and operational.
A typical street in Vang Vieng. Nice mountains in the distance!
A few hours later, we attempted to go eat dinner (after 40 minutes of waiting to even receive our drinks, with no food in sight, and after asking every waiter we could if our food was coming to no avail or response, we ended up just leaving to find another restaurant). We vowed to recalibrate our timing and start ordering food before we were hungry for the rest of our time in Laos. At this point, around 9:30 or 10pm, we wandered past the bar with the whiskey bucket party I had heard so much about. We took one look at the crowded scene (blaring electronic music with blue disco lights and a cover charge that included a free t-shirt with the slogan “drink triple, see double, act single”) and decided that maybe it wasn’t worth a free bucket of frozen cocktail slush after all. [Editor’s note: Don’t Jess’s smug tone fool you. She was way more interested in joining this raging party than she lets on, and even spent the whole evening conflicted about whether we should head over there for the evening. Ultimately we made the right decision to not do so, but it was hardly as cut-and-dry as she portrays.] We headed across the street to an Irish pub and spent a lovely night playing darts and singing along with the rest of the bar to the covers performed by an Irish guitar player (which included Backstreet Boys, Oasis, and, entertainingly, rap songs by OutKast and Coolio). At the stroke of midnight, the bar counted down together, then spilled onto the street where locals started shooting off fireworks straight above our heads and a few groups lit paper lanterns that floated up into the sky around us. Happy 2018! [Editor’s note: It was cool to see the carefree spontaneity of the evening after midnight hit, as everyone combined to express exuberance in their own ways. It was also cool to see the night sky filled with lanterns being lit from a variety of locations, though it was also harrowing to watch one be lit near us as it kept sinking to the ground like a fireball of death and then, eventually, got caught in the power lines above us before finally breaking free and floating into the sky.]
The Irish pub scene on New Year’s Eve
People in the street shoot off bottle rockets above the crowd
Hello from the street party!
Attempting to launch a paper lantern in the street just after midnight
We kicked off our year on January 1st by embarking on the famous Vang Vieng river tubing experience. Prior to 2012, this was apparently an extremely popular, debaucherous, and consequently dangerous activity where tourists would frequently get so drunk they would fall off their inner tubes and drown. The government finally cracked down on the many, many riverside bars contributing to the party scene, and now it’s a comparatively tamer afternoon on the river with only a few bars along the way. We rented our tubes from a spot in town that then piled a bunch of us into a tuk-tuk and drove us upriver, where we all sat in our tubes and began floating with the slow, gentle current back towards town. In the ride up, we met a traveling couple from my hometown of Seattle (small world!) and spent the day with them, holding onto each other’s tubes, ankles, or whatever we could grab to avoid drifting too far apart. Along the way, there are still a few bars to stop at with hilariously energetic locals standing by the river and throwing ropes to passing tubers like us so they could tow us in to the riverbank to hang out at the bar for a while before continuing downstream through the beautiful jungle-covered mountains. It was a fun and novel way to spend an afternoon, and I really enjoyed the level of relaxation (high) compared to the level of drunken partying (low), especially after hearing the horror stories from years past. [Editor’s note: The whole afternoon of floating and drinking lasted 3-4 hours, which was a nice amount of time to just enjoy the setting. There were other folks floating on the river but it definitely wasn’t packed, so we were able to feel like we had it to ourselves a bit as well which was cool. Finally, the “exit” from the river was at a bar on the outskirts of town so we could just pull our tubes up and carry them down the road for 5-10 minutes before dropping them off at the return site. A perfect way to end the activity.]
Our tubing contingent floating down the river
Rorie gets pulled in to shore at one of the bars along the way
A little mid-tubing beer pong with our new friends
Enjoying the scenery as we float
To explore more of the area, Rorie and I split up for a day of outdoor activities where he went rock climbing and I did a kayaking and caving day tour. I had a good time kayaking the river, though most of the entertainment was in watching the other tourists in my group (mostly Korean, with a few Israelis) who had never previously kayaked attempt to steer down the river before capsizing or getting stuck in the plants lining the riverbank, all while my kayak partner (a German girl) and I easily floated down the middle of the river with no problems. That’s what living on islands and kayaking since childhood will do I suppose – thanks, Mom and Dad! The cave was nothing special (ugh, I’m still a cave snob after Vietnam) but the cool gimmick was that we floated through part of it on inner tubes, pulling ourselves along a rope mounted above the water while looking around with only headlamps. It was definitely a fun new way to see a cave, but as it was dry season we couldn’t float through much of the cave and ended up walking the majority of it. Overall a fun day!
My German kayaking partner and I on the river
The tubes by the cave entrance
Tubing into the cave with headlamps!
Over to Rorie for his rock climbing experience: I had a vicious 24 hour cold the day prior, so had to push this to the following day after imbibing copious amounts of ginger tea and dodgy Laotian cold medicine. All better! For rock climbing we rode in a tuk tuk to a random part of the river, then were taken across it in a boat to a sizable limestone cliff face. We walked around the cliff face to a crevice in between the mountains which became our rock climbing destination, which was quite excellent! Though I’m not a particularly great rock climber, I’ve always wanted to try doing it on actual mountains instead of just in an artificial, indoor environment. This was stellar, as our capable guide setup four climbs of varying degrees of difficulty to navigate (the highest was around 90 feet high), which we all enjoyed and managed to complete successfully in our half day of climbing until lunchtime. One part in particular that was really cool was where our climbing route crisscrossed a portion of the wall where a large tree root had grown through and down the wall. I was able to use the root to aid me in climbing over the section of the wall and even managed to wedge myself against the wall so that I could lean back against the root for a rest mid-climb, which was awesome. Ultimately it was an awesome activity that was well worth the meager $20 it cost me for the morning.
Getting ready to climb
Working my way up the wall
The crevice that was our rock climbing site
The rest of our time in Vang Vieng was relatively calm as we mostly wandered the streets and coffee shops of the town, catching up on blog entries and doing travel research. It did grow on us over time as we discovered a few nice riverside bars and restaurants, though I still wouldn’t count Vang Vieng as more than just a convenient stopping place to tube down the river for a day or engage in some active outdoor activities. [Editor’s note: I have a slightly more positive outlook on our Vang Vieng experience. I generally found it to be a nice little town with a worthwhile mix of outdoor activities to easily fill several days. I think we also found it to be more chill and relaxing than we anticipated given its famous (outdated?) reputation as a party haven, so that was nice to discover as well.] Next on our itinerary: Luang Prabang, a town that is supposed to be “so cute you just want to stay forever!” Will we? Stay tuned for the next installment! [Editor’s note: Spoiler alert – we won’t stay forever. Rest assured, family!]
The rickety bridge leading to a chill bar and hangout spot
Rorie doing travel research in a hammock, writing on the back of a food tray
One of the more wonderful but random traditions in Vang Vieng is for the restaurants and bars to show reruns of the TV show Friends (with Lao subtitles) every night.
Laotian street art
