Mini New Braunfels

Vang Vieng is a pure tourist town. As you stroll into town you soon discover that every address on every street is occupied by either a guesthouse, a tour operator of some sort, a shop selling Beer Lao t-shirts, or a restaurant blaring episodes of either Friends or Family Guy on a constant loop.

After wandering around town for a bit we settled on the Champa Lao Guest House. It's a very simple guest house with just a bed with a mosquito net in the room, but it's by the river, includes breakfast, and it's cheap!

We then wandered out to the island in the middle of the Nam Song River to grab a drink and watch the sunset. On our way we met up with some English guys we had met on the slow boat to Laos. In addition to the sideways sunset, we got to watch a few tubers make their way down the river and attempt to get out.






On our first full day in town we decided to try out the famous tubing on the Nam Song river! Most people we met thought this was a very strange concept, but we told them we were pros. So here's how it works when you tube in Laos... You get your tube and they take you up river (same same) but instead of bringing your own cooler to keep you cool throughout the day, you just grab onto one of the many ropes tied to water bottles that are thrown into the water by the many many bars lining the river (but different.)






Unfortunately, we didn't anticipate the costly deposit for the tubes, so our cash was limited. We started out at the first bar where they drop you off and each got a bucket of Tiger Whiskey and coke, the standard Lao drink. Mattie doesn't really care for whisky all that much, but this Lao Whisky is tasty :) All of the bars that are worth going to have some sort of attraction, like a slide or a swing or a zip line into the river. Since the river is at it's low point, being winter and all, we opted out of these adventures in fear of breaking a leg on an unseen rock. Instead we went to the Sling Shot Bar which only has some sling shots and rocks set up with beer cans to aim at. It may sound harmless, but if you're too confident, you would be wrong. Yes, that's right, Mattie had a little accident with the sling shot. Here's how it went down....

Julian is playing with the sling shot with the bar keep. He makes his first 2 shots, dead on. Mattie comes along and wants to try it out, it can't be that hard. Julian says, "Be careful! Don't hit yourself!" Mattie says, "Hit myself? What do you think I am? Some stupid girl?"



Of course, Mattie slings that river rock directly into her left thumb. Not realizing blood is now pouring out of her finger, she tries to pretend that nothing happened... Obviously that didn't go so well! Not thinking of water cleanliness, she dunks it in the river to wash off all the blood. Don't worry, the bar keep came over to clean it with alcohol and bandage it up quite nicely! He also instructed her to keep it out of the river as much as possible, so that just meant that Julian had to do all the paddling, which turned out to be quite a lot. Because of Mattie's injury and our now lack of cash, we tubed/paddled the rest of the way to town, which most people don't really do.


We caved that night and went to watch Friends while eating dinner :)

The following day, we went tubing with plenty of cash. Instead of starting where they drop you off, we walked up river to the very frst bar to get the party started. The water was much deeper at that point in the river, so Julian decided to go on the slide after some persuasion from other tubers.









Ouch! That hurt! But it didn't stop him from going on others bars' swings and zip lines.



Even Mattie joined in the fun once we found a swing where you didn't graze the bottom when you dropped in the river.






We ended our "tubing" trip about where we started the previous day due to lack of time... The tubes had to be turned in by 6pm.



The next day, we woke up at 6:30 am and stumbled to the local Irish bar to watch the Super Bowl! Mattie was only there to watch the commercials, but of course, they don't play them overseas. Instead we got to watch ads for other sports, Redbull and Sketchers... The game was great until about 1/3 of the way through the third quarter the power in the entire town went out! Since there was nothing to do in town we rented some bicycles with cute little baskets and bells that didn't work and rode out to the Phu Kahn Cave. The road was rocky and trecherous but we made it eventually.



The cave was really cool and humongous! If we would have had better lights we could have explored it more, but we only had the one that we bought off the street in Bangkok.



Outside of the cave is the Blue Lagoon, named for it's strangely blue water. We went for a swim and then headed back to town on our dinky bikes.



The next day we went rock climbing! Julian was skeptical that Mattie would be able to do it because she has no arm muscles, but he was proven wrong!






Having spent almost a week on Vang Vieng, we felt the time to move on had come. The next day we got a bus to Vientiane, the capital city of Laos.

- Mattie and Julian

Location:Vang Vieng, Laos