Tubing, Caving, Visa's and a Coin flip - Vang Vieng and Venetian

I had arrived at the Vang Vieng and took a walk around the town. It was completely obvious this was a backpacker town. Teens walking around in swim ware, people walking around sky high on something. It was a noisy and happening place.

Every bar, restaurant and business had either Family guy or Friends showing and were full of people watching the episodes while drinking.

The next day I had heard about the tubing and caves surrounding Vang Vieng. I headed to the tube starting area on my bike to check it out, it was a launch pad for the tubes. The Tubes being basically big truck tire inner tubes. Then the riverbanks were covered in bars, clubs, swings, seesaws, and other recreation activities. I was way to early, everyone was still sound asleep or working off a hang over, so I went caving.

There was something like 10 caves in a small area, some of then were nothing special but there was a few that were amazing and large. One in particular went on for a good 500m or so, and had massive limestone curtains and other cave formations.

It wasn’t like they were easy to get to either, I got completely lost on the way to one of the caves and ended up riding around on my motorbike through some farmers rice fields. It would have been a blast if it wasn’t so muddy and the 2 meter cobra I almost ran over. That was enough for me.

That afternoon I doubled back to town and went tubing. Sorry no photos as it was all on water. But I got extremely drunk and it was a blast, I stayed well away from the swing of death. You could see the injuries from the people who had tried it, the water was only ½ meter deep and they are jumping at height into it… yeah smart one! Never the less the tubing is considered a rite on passage among backpackers around south east Asia.

The following day I packed up my things again and headed out of town, as much fun as the town is it simply didn’t interest me to stay for longer.

The ride to Venetian was truly nothing special after about 20km the road hit a flat plain and became industrial and farm land for 100km. Plus I had a headache from the previous day.

I reached Venetian nice and early that day, and checked into my hostel. I was in the capital city of Laos for the main reason to get my Visa’s for the onward trips sorted, the border visa’s were very expensive as I had to add a bribe on top so hopefully this would stop that?

Never the less I had 4 days to kill. So I went and to see some of the sights and sounds around Venetian. The day that I arrived I spent the rest of the day just walking along the Mekong river, it was so peaceful and when the sunset it was like always, perfect only thing missing was Sông. ;)

Some of the sights I visited in Venetian were really old and nice.

One of the days, i did take a nice long long long... drive out of town past the friendship bridge (the border to Thailand that crosses the Mekong), to a small town that had a big reclining buddha made out of stone.

The site had a few 100 different buddha statues, from all over the world. They had a massive globe like thing with a mig mouth, inside was a staircase and what could only be described as the "internals of buddha" it was grose.
It was all made out of clay and concrete but the figures were grose however it did give a good view when you reached the top.

I also went to see a small temple, the locals were hard at work renovating it by hand. They had some pet spider monkeys as well.

The last night in Venetian, I was up late. The next morning I new I was moving on but I couldn’t decide on where. The problem was that the south of Laos was a long drive around the Mekong river, and although it would be a nice drive. It would put me ½ of Cambodia and a week of riding to get to the things I wanted to see there. The alternative was to skip the south of Laos for another trip, and take the friendship bridge, which was 10km away over to Thailand. Then head to Bangkok and then to Cambodia. This would give me more to see and put me in the correct place.

I flipped a coin for it.

Till next time, have fun.

Steffen