One of the main attractions of the town is inner-tubing down the Nam Song River. While this might sound like a peaceful and relaxing experience, we soon learned it was anything but. The river is overflowing with tubers, swimmers, motorboats, kayaks, and those brave enough to leap from the numerous rope swings. The river's edge is also overrun with western bars, each with its own music genre in competition with the next's. The bars have various platforms, zip lines, rope-swings, and slides that all look a bit suicidal, but are amazingly popular. When we heard a rumor that two girls had died in rope swing accidents so far that month, it didn't surprise us much. Yet despite all the bars, there were some pretty parts.
The highlight of our float was the local crowd. Even after three days of celebrating the new year, the Lao people were still going strong. As we floated along everyone splashed and tried to involve us in the celebration. Two men, specifically, took a special interest in us and practically forced beer down our thoughts to our delight.
Away from the river we tried more street meat and especially enjoyed the Lao BBQ chicken and rice cooked in bamboo shoots.
The next day, we returned to the river, this time on a kayaking trip. During the wet season, the river can be quite trecherous, but as we were at the very end of the dry season it ran quiet low. Along the way, our guide stopped at two different caves to explore. These were not the tourist-safe caves you'd see in America, with installed lighting or walking platforms. One of the caves had been used as a bomb shelter by locals during the many bombing campaigns in this area. The other cave provided a shortcut through the mountain and is still heavily used by the locals. This cave's floor is littered with burnt bamboo sticks which they use instead of flashlights.
After kayaking, caving, lunch, and more kayaking, Lindsey started to slack a bit on the paddling.
Vang Vieng was a beautiful place and we can see what brought people here once upon a time. Unfortunately, it now lacks any of it's former charm and is a lot more like a college spring break venue. So after a few days of playing around the river, we headed on a bus to Vientiene to cross back into Thailand.
Vientiene turned out to be a pretty dull place. The one thing we did do here was visit a rather odd park of Buddhas set just outside of the city. This provided a good 20 minutes of entertainment and a few funny pictures.
Our next planned stop to the Beer Lao Factory was going to be the highlight of our day, but the plant was sadly closed for the new year. We looked at the closed gates sadly and returned to our hotel for a nap.
After a couple days in backpacker-land followed by another in nothing-land we were excited to get back to Thailand and headed there on an overnight train. More to come on the Thai islands.
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