I did not go tubing in Vang Vieng

Wherever we’ve gone, we’ve seen young European travelers wearing the same t-shirt emblazoned with the words: “Tubing in the Vang Vieng,” an activity travelers through Southeast Asia have deemed a right of passage.  But floating down a  river among drunk backpackers and stopping at riverside bars was not a passage I was interested in taking and so we had planned to skip Vang Vieng altogether.  I’m glad we decided not to.

“Highway” 13 in Laos, the main road connecting North to South, is extremely thin and winds through mountain passes which are prone to landslides. Consequently, buses barely go more than 40 km per hour. So the nearly 400 km journey to Vientiane can be a bit too long and tiring. We decided to break it up by taking a bus 7 hours to Vang Vieng then another 4 hours to Vientiane. The first leg was absolutely stunning. I was occupied for all 7 hours simply staring out the window of our mini-bus as we climbed higher and higher into the mountains and passed through hundreds of roadside villages. In the course of our ride, we witnessed an entire day in the life of a village. Families cooking lunch, men coming home from work in the fields with baskets over their back, and villagers soaping up and showering in the small waterfalls of water that stream down from the mountains.

We would have liked to have the opportunity to stop and take pictures but I don’t think we could have managed the drive on our own. On several occasions, I was white-knuckled with fear that our minibus driver would hit a small child running in the street or careen over the edge of the mountain due to fog that appeared suddenly and blanketed sight of the road. But he drove carefully and attentively and everyone arrived safely, albeit late, in Vang Vieng.

We stayed at a cheap guest house across the river from Vang Vieng town center, which we were desperately trying to avoid because of its reputation for cushion-padded bars screening re-runs of Friends and drunk shirtless dudes stumbling down the street.  Life across the river was completely quiet and untouched by backpacker raunchiness. We woke up early and started to walk down the main dirt road that passes through the human and natural wonders of Vang Vieng: flat green rice paddies nestled below jungle-carpeted limestone cliffs, blue-green lagoons and buddha-filled caves. We hiked up one of the limestone mountains, which turned out to be a slippery steep scramble in unbearable humidity created by the tightly packed greenery.  The view was stunning but we were too exhausted and bothered by giant ants to really enjoy it so we came back down and recouped with bottles of water at a nearby stand. We proceeded to spend the day walking, stopping at roadside stands to have a bottle of water, a beer lao or a bowl of noodles. And we’d just watch life around us: a 5 year old child carrying his 1 year old sibling, a dumb cow being taunted by a pack of dogs, and naked toddlers jumping in the creek.  At the end of the long road was an amazing cave with dripping stalactites and containing a bronze reclining Buddha.  We were tired and daunted by the muddy walk back so we hitched a ride by tractor — really the only feasible way to pass through the slippery road.