Jill & George's trip: Up cliffs and down river in Vang Vieng

After 2 days in Vientiane Jill and I went north to the small town of Vang Vieng. Our bus wound its way up into the hills that jutted up from the flat plains around Vientiane. It was a bright, hazy morning and the layers of hills, one rising up behind the other, each one higher and more spectacular than the last, faded away into the pale blue sky. We weaved through villages where children in their full tribal dress played in the streets and puppies harassed unimpressed pigs with playful leaps and yaps.

We had heard many stories about Vang Vieng from friends and fellow travellers in the past few months, but all of the tales ended with “You have to go just to experience it”. We were both a little unsure what we would make of it and the thought of a town full of gap year backpackers drinking their body weight in Beerlao before jumping head first into the river didn’t sound that appealing.

What we found when we pulled into the bus station was a town spanning the Nam Som river surrounded by an unbelievably beautiful landscape with giant limestone karsts to the west, and as we watched the sun set upon them with a cold beer in a relaxed riverside bar we realised that it would be a town of huge contrasts. For all the people who went there to get drunk, pull a random stranger and be sick on themselves, (all while wearing a hat, vest and shorts with ‘In the Tubeing Vang Vieng’) there were people who wanted to take advantage of the opportunity to go kayaking, caving, climbing, trekking, cycling and of course tubeing, that was on offer. We fell into the latter group.

After an early morning breakfast overlooking the river we grabbed a ‘tube’ (tractor tyre innertube), each and jumped in a tuk tuk which took us 4km north of town to the start of the tubeing section of the river. We arrived at 11:30am and were handed a shot of Lao Lao, Jill managed to avoid this but I knocked it back.

For those of you who don’t know, tubeing began life as a relaxing and fun way of drifting down the river surrounded by nature, taking in the the quiet calm of the Laos countryside, then someone thought that they would put a bar at the start. What evolved was a pub crawl on water.You have a drink at one bar, swinging into the river from rope swings or using the waterslides, and then when you are bored of that bar you simple grab your tube and float on down to the next one, they throw out a rope and you pull yourself in. The bars take up about half a kilometre before you can calmly drift the remaining 3.5km to the town.

We made the most of the first few bars, swinging into the river and choosing to watch the unfolding chaos as the group that we had met along the way get increasingly drunker rather than be directly involved in it. Not put off by the Halong Bay Back-flop I was keen to be flung into the water from various heights. I really enjoyed the experience and to end it with a relaxed float to the finish was an incredible way to see the area.

The following day we thought we would try our hand at a bit of rock climbing. We took a Sawngthaew out of town to a narrow bamboo bridge that crossed the river. We then trekked through an orchard with piglets charging about, a small village with people busy harvesting the fields, and then out onto a jungle path with huge spiders webs on either side. We emerged at a clearing where two limestone karsts sat alongside each other with a 3 metre gap down the middle and vertical faces rising 35 metres above either side. This would be our home for the day.

Our instructor, Li, told us about the various holds and grips, and the basics to climbing before we set off on the first of 6 climbs which got progressively more difficult as the day went on. It was a great day that pushed our muscles in ways we hadn’t before and tested the nerve at the top of the 25 metre climbs. By the 6^th climb, the most difficult, our arms and fingers had nothing more to give and we left feeling spent. That evening we tucked into a well earned plate of Laap and reflected on a fun couple of days in Vang Vieng. The following day we would be off, north again, to Luang Prabang...