Vang Vieng (Laos)
Unless you’re flying out of a town via a predetermined ‘Air Maybe’ route then your only other realistic option to get into Vang Vieng is on a Venga Bus! A ‘Venga Bus’ you ask? Well, if you remember the Vengaboys and the torment of their only known song then you’ll be in the right frame of mind to imagine the torment of riding through the central highlands of Laos on a typical public style Lao cross country VIP Bus. The trouble is not so much with their penchant for the Vboys but rather their ear piercing, soul destroying need to blare Lao Karaoke hits of the 70’s at full volume for hours on end. This is falang torment and obviously a not so silent protest by the Lao people to get all tourists, or perhaps just all haters off their vomit machines of death. The two questions I’d love to have answered, which for some reason I failed to ask is;
1) Why crank the volume up to 110 decibels? Seriously you could hear the high pitched shrill of your famous nationalistic tunes even if they were being played across the border in Vietnam, and;
2) Do we really need hours of this stuff? I mean I’m not wearing an orange jumpsuit and torture is not something that I signed on for whilst taking this cruise!
In addition to this JJ also noticed that a young man at the back of the bus also had a not so well hidden rifle under his jacket? WTF? This young man (no more than 16 years of age) is holding a rifle for what exact reason? Or rather, the better question was, what the hell does he think he’ll be able to achieve with that thing? Admittedly I half knew the answer, but either way, to actually see the result was disconcerting. So just to fill you in a little, route 13 from Luang Prabang to Vang Vieng (which the route from Phonsovan joins up to at approximately the half way mark), is a notorious spot for hijackings and/or insurgent attacks on public buses. Whilst an attack hasn’t happened here a few years (2004 being the last one where passengers were in fact killed) seeing your safety left in the hands of a kid that looked like he had a pop gun was a little amusing and slightly unsettling. Thankfully the ride through to Vang Vieng was completed without and problems and the scenery during the last couple of hours was about the best we’d encountered on the journey thus far.
.Unless you’re flying out of a town via a predetermined ‘Air Maybe’ route then your only other realistic option to get into Vang Vieng is on a Venga Bus! A ‘Venga Bus’ you ask? Well, if you remember the Vengaboys and the torment of their only known song then you’ll be in the right frame of mind to imagine the torment of riding through the central highlands of Laos on a typical public style Lao cross country VIP Bus. The trouble is not so much with their penchant for the Vboys but rather their ear piercing, soul destroying need to blare Lao Karaoke hits of the 70’s at full volume for hours on end. This is falang torment and obviously a not so silent protest by the Lao people to get all tourists, or perhaps just all haters off their vomit machines of death. The two questions I’d love to have answered, which for some reason I failed to ask is;
1) Why crank the volume up to 110 decibels? Seriously you could hear the high pitched shrill of your famous nationalistic tunes even if they were being played across the border in Vietnam, and;
2) Do we really need hours of this stuff? I mean I’m not wearing an orange jumpsuit and torture is not something that I signed on for whilst taking this cruise!
In addition to this JJ also noticed that a young man at the back of the bus also had a not so well hidden rifle under his jacket? WTF? This young man (no more than 16 years of age) is holding a rifle for what exact reason? Or rather, the better question was, what the hell does he think he’ll be able to achieve with that thing? Admittedly I half knew the answer, but either way, to actually see the result was disconcerting. So just to fill you in a little, route 13 from Luang Prabang to Vang Vieng (which the route from Phonsovan joins up to at approximately the half way mark), is a notorious spot for hijackings and/or insurgent attacks on public buses. Whilst an attack hasn’t happened here a few years (2004 being the last one where passengers were in fact killed) seeing your safety left in the hands of a kid that looked like he had a pop gun was a little amusing and slightly unsettling. Thankfully the ride through to Vang Vieng was completed without and problems and the scenery during the last couple of hours was about the best we’d encountered on the journey thus far.
From memory JJ and I pulled up in Vang Vieng late in the afternoon having already radioed ahead to our other companions advising them of our arrival, not sure if they cared much at all but there you have it. We made base at the Thavonsouk Resort and Hotel, a great relaxing place located on the banks of the Nam Song river, and then lined ourselves up for whatever escapades inevitably going to follow.
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Now a short note at this point upon how and why Vang Vieng came to pass. As I’ve written in an earlier blog update, the idea of Laos itself was brought to my attention by an ex- AAPT business analyst that advised me of it’s treasures just before leaving for Vietnam/Cambodia at the end of 2007. The place that he spoke of was Vang Vieng, and he didn’t mention the magnificent scenery, which is in fact lush, green and filled with limestone mountains, but more to the point he drew my attention to the bamboo bars and afternoons spent cruising down the Nam Song in large rubber tubes. That, from a tourist/backpacking perspective, was the Vang Vieng draw card and admittedly my priority for making the excursion. He also mentioned the endless ‘Friends’ re-runs in most of the bars in town, but that is another story for another day.
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Now a short note at this point upon how and why Vang Vieng came to pass. As I’ve written in an earlier blog update, the idea of Laos itself was brought to my attention by an ex- AAPT business analyst that advised me of it’s treasures just before leaving for Vietnam/Cambodia at the end of 2007. The place that he spoke of was Vang Vieng, and he didn’t mention the magnificent scenery, which is in fact lush, green and filled with limestone mountains, but more to the point he drew my attention to the bamboo bars and afternoons spent cruising down the Nam Song in large rubber tubes. That, from a tourist/backpacking perspective, was the Vang Vieng draw card and admittedly my priority for making the excursion. He also mentioned the endless ‘Friends’ re-runs in most of the bars in town, but that is another story for another day.
View of the Nam Song from the Thavonsouk Resort & Hotel - Vang Vieng - Laos
After setting down and finding ourselves in more than a comfortable abode, JJ and I struck out across town to rendezvous with our fellow travellers on a large-ish island in the middle of the Nam Song. When I say large, five large bars with space to burn is what I mean. This we found out by crossing a somewhat quaint if not rickety wooden bridge and thence we set foot on the Isle of Mysteries & Dreams. Upon our arrival we already spotted Jase and Audrey on hammock patrol, swaying with the wanes and wallows of the central Lao breezes, consuming whatever mind altering substance was on offer and exuding the infamous Vang Vieng chilled state of mind. Now that’s the look that I wanted! So as JJ and I pulled up our own little hut with complimentary hammocks we ordered up a couple orders of Happy Herbs garlic bread finest and laid back to enjoy the sounds of serenity, watching the Nam Song gently slip away into the distance. Now, this is what the essence of ‘chill’ is all about! Note also, this was to be my departure point for the next week (aka, 36hrs), as Happy Herbs finest was just in its first steps of doing a gigantic number on me and taking me on a fabulous mystery tour of auditory and visual hallucinations.
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Now it’s been noted that in the ‘Fog of War’ wires get crossed, communication breaks down and things that may appear to be apparent and clear are certainly not. In my world, the fog that was slowly descending on me after chomping through a couple of well garnished slices of garlic bread was now surreptitiously affecting my feelings of well being, my overall chilled-ness and also my capacity to communicate with anyone other that myself. For some reason I felt like I was dropping into a zone where I was half a sentence behind the conversation permanently,not that it worried me, because the fire going off in the middle of this island bar was drawing me in like the proverbial moth, and man, I was feeling Allllright, yeah! I think somewhere between feeling alright and my overwhelming need for food JJ and I left Jase and Audrey to bask in their own Vang Vieng glow for the rest of the evening and we alternatively challenged ourselves to walk into town and find ourselves a satisfactory meal.
As the town itself goes, it obviously knows the type of clientele that frequents Vang Vieng and it obviously caters for those that are in need of a desperate midnight munch. What it doesn’t let you in on is the fact that the walk back into town for some reason takes 10hrs longer than the walk to the bar, call it special relativity, call it fatigue or call it the mind altering substances, that walk, especially in the mind of JJ, warranted us hooking up with a ‘caravan of courage’ that would have assisted us across the wastelands of the Vang Vieng backstreets, if indeed we could have found one.
As the town itself goes, it obviously knows the type of clientele that frequents Vang Vieng and it obviously caters for those that are in need of a desperate midnight munch. What it doesn’t let you in on is the fact that the walk back into town for some reason takes 10hrs longer than the walk to the bar, call it special relativity, call it fatigue or call it the mind altering substances, that walk, especially in the mind of JJ, warranted us hooking up with a ‘caravan of courage’ that would have assisted us across the wastelands of the Vang Vieng backstreets, if indeed we could have found one.
Can you see why this fire amazed me so much? Neither can I.....now...
Aside from me now being more than a sentence or two behind the conversational game, I still had enough of my senses to line up one of the Australian run bars in town that made such a monstrous, gluttonous and decadent burger, that saying it rose something like 20cms off the plate would not have been too far from the truth. It was also, unequivocally, THE BEST burger that I’ve had in my life, or, to adopt a Janellism, ‘the best burger in the history of burgers’. It was unbelievably good, I mean, draw your own conclusions as to why that may have been the case, but it was ‘Ken Awesome…truly'. Still further, from memory (which of this night really vagues out towardsthe end), it actually did enough to beat me. There was burger left over to burn on the plate and no matter how much I tried I just couldn’t take the thing down. Almost forlornly I needed to admit defeat and with a heavy heart I left the most AWESOME burger ever on its lonely plate whilst Janelle laughed at how much I was heralding its mastery of all burger elements in a unique concoction of perfection. When both our conversations finally matched up and our minds clicked into first gear, a genuine struggle I tell you, we decided that making a run back to our hotel was going to be the best option for this night, and as tomorrow? Well that was going to be another day, or so I thought!
…..Vang Vieng…..too be continued
