Vientiane

We arrived in Vientiane and began our usual struggle of trying to find somewhere to stay. Enquiring at a few places and finding everywhere was at least 50% more expensive than anywhere else, or only the price for a single dorm bed, we decided Diana would wait with the bags whilst I went for a hunt. Returning, all I found out was that Vientiane was more expensive than we expected, or at least it certainly was in this area. We settled for one which admittedly came with luxuries we weren't used to having frequently, such as air conditioning and a fridge.

Unsure what to do now we were settled, we headed out to a place Diana was very interested in seeing called COPE visitor centre, a rehabilitation centre for amputees and people who had suffered from cluster bombs left over from the Vietnamese war.

Taking the 'scenic' route through this concrete jungle, passing all the French style middle class eateries, we stumbled upon an interesting pagoda located in the middle of a roundabout. Unfortunately we were a little out of love for pagodas at this stage of our trip, so we took a couple of photos and wandered onwards.

The roundabouts are a bit fancier than at home...

Our next sight was of a pet shop, which wasn't a particularly pleasant one as puppies were tightly cramped into cages, without any water on a 30+ degree day. Asking the woman to give them something to drink as they were clearly dehydrated, the woman poured a tiny amount of strangely pink liquid into a small bowl, which the puppies proceeded to fight to get anything they could. Another dog in the adjacent cage saw this and started yelping as it was clearly thirsty too, and it wasn't enough she gave the others. In an act of rebellion as the woman refused to give them any more, Diana poured the remainder of our water in to the cage, which the woman saw, ran over and threw out immediately. Short of having a fight in a language we didn't know, or getting arrested, there was little more we could do and carried on towards the visitor centre, more agitated than we had been before.

We arrived at the visitor centre and were greeted by a museum explaining what they did, and how the situation has come about. After the Vietnamese war, many cluster bombs had found their way over the border and into Laos, many of which are still unexploded and buried to this day. Examples of prosthesis used were on display, along with documentaries, photos and diagrams of cluster bombs and how they were detected.

An OT in her natural environment

As we were ending our look around, a man approached us and asked us where we were from and if he could talk with us a while. He was from a village near Vientiane, 26 years old, had lost both hands and all of his sight and seemed desperate to meet a European girl to be his girlfriend, he was quite fussy about her hair and accent though, and he thought a girl from Lao would be too much work. His English was quite good, and he seemed shocked by how tall I was. 

As we were leaving we spotted an indoor sports hall for people with disabilities, where they had just started a game of wheelchair basketball. Nobody seemed to mind us watching, so we ended up spending quite a while watching and feeling impressed by their agility (and their abilities to get themselves back in their chairs when they inevitably fell out of them.

We headed back towards downtown, spotting a shopping centre along the way and figured we’d have a look about. For some reason, they were having a huge promotion on Plants VS Zombies, which I figure would have made my mum very happy due to her slight level of obsession for the game. Unfortunately, we couldn’t justify travelling with stuffed toys, so we left them where they were and just posed next to a few of the statues they had dotted around.

If you look carefully, Diana is in this photo.

We reached downtown and headed towards a night market we’d heard about. At first, it seemed there wasn’t a lot to see, only food related things (although now we had a fancy room with a fridge we took advantage and bought some of the yoghurt they had on offer). We soon realised the path carried on a lot further than we had first anticipated, and sure enough we were plunged into a standard South East Asian market scenario, all the bootleg gear you can imagine, plenty of mobile phone cases and accessories (I have no idea what they sold before phones became as popular as they did, I imagine streets were considerably more empty) and various clothing that immediately got Diana’s attention.

The next morning we tried to say we wanted to stay another night, but alas, our room was booked and we would have to move rooms. Seeing as this was still the cheapest place in the area, we agreed, but no more fridge and a significantly less maintained room overall. We’d had worse though, so we sucked it up and worked out a plan for the day.

We’d heard about a nearby attraction called ‘Buddha park’. Somewhat Buddha’d out, but apparently unmissable for the area, we rented a scooter for the day and set about it. Me on directions and Diana at the handlebars, the way there was fairly simple, pretty much a couple of little turns  and one main road. We arrived, not entirely sure what to expect, paid to park our bike and our entrance fee.

Greeted by a huge ball with windows and a stone tree growing out the top, we were already unsure exactly what the place was about. All around were various different Buddhist and Hindu sculptures, in no apparent formation or reason, like an outdoor sculpture museum. Upon inspecting the ball sculpture closer, a huge open mouthed face appeared as an entrance, so we took a look inside. The rooms went around the circumference of the ball, going both up and down stairs, with various different sculptures within. We were able to climb all the way to the top to get a view over the rest of the park, and I managed to bang my head on multiple occasions trying to climb up and down all the odd staircases.

Entrance to the sphere. Om nom nom.

Overlooking the Buddha park

We had a quick picnic of the sandwiches we’d purchased before hiring the scooter and carried on up the road, as we’d read there was a national park somewhere around, many kilometres away. Unfortunately as soon as we carried on along the road beyond the Buddha park, the road quickly deteriorated, turning more into a gravel track and dust than an actual road. Unfortunately it was quite a few KM’s on this type of road, so we took it in turns until we reached the main road again, trying to avoid the potcraters and huge puddles along the way.

Eventually we made it back to the main road, however, we didn’t really know what we were looking for. Vaguely following the map towards the National Park, we reached a split in the road where we weren’t quite sure where to go, and needing fuel anyway, stopped at a fuelling station to try and ask for directions. We just about managed to pronounce the name of our destination correctly, and were pointed along the way we suspected. Off we went, followed by a huge truck, through a closed barrier everyone seemed to be ignoring and swerving around.

Get your moto' ruunnniiinggg...

A sign post stated that somewhere ahead was a waterfall, so we figured we’d head towards that and see what we could find. By this point we’ve been on the bike for over an hour in the hot sun, so we’re getting a little fed up but hoping we’ll find something worth it. After maybe 15 minutes of going down this dirt road, with absolutely nothing around us (almost like a disused quarry site rather than a nice national park) and no signs, we’re debated turning back as we figure it must have been a turn we missed. We stop and get ready to turn back, when the truck catches us up and points to me, then onwards up the road. Figuring he’s guessed where we’re heading and it’s not far away, we have one last attempt to get there, only to find we were about 400m from another sign up a side road to the waterfall we’d been looking for. Nodding and giving the truck driver a thumbs up, we headed along the road, Diana about at the end of her tether but we’d come so far we thought we’d give it a go, not knowing what to expect as we’d read nothing about it.

What we found though was pretty awesome. We parked up and must have been the first foreign people to the area, as we found out it hadn’t been open for long and the time it had been open it was barely advertised other than in Lao. The area was full of Lao families and friends sat at the side of the waterfall, picnicking, drinking beer and swimming around. Overheated and the sight of the nice cool water, Diana wasted little time hopping in and having a swim around, some of the clearest water we’d actually seen in Lao after being fairly disappointed with the ‘Blue Lagoon’.

As Diana was bobbing around and cooling down, a slight smile on her face after the ordeal of getting here, I was called over by a group of Lao men and women. At least, I think I was, they spoke no English and I spoke no Lao, but I went over and we mimed some things at each other, next thing I knew a glass of ice cold beer was in my hand. They pointed at Diana, indicating I should get her up to have a drink too, and soon enough we were drinking with a group of Lao people, doing our best to communicate which wasn’t too straightforward but everyone was laughing at the attempts. I made the executive decision to stop drinking (much to everyone’s disappointment as they kept thrusting more glasses of beer in my hands) as one of us needed to ride back, which we just about managed to explain in hand gestures to them. They then gestured picking up a motorbike and putting it in the back of a pick up truck (we think) so I could carry on drinking, which we declined as seeing the state of them all I figured they probably weren’t the safest hands to be driven by.

A waterfall with only two white people around!

Diana now a little tipsy and darkness starting to set in, we rode back (narrowly avoiding running out of fuel and too stubborn to buy an ample amount for when we handed back the rental bike.) The next day involved very little action, just preparing to hop on our longest bus of the trip so far, a 28 hour trip over the border to Vietnam, Hanoi.

All of our photos from Laos - Vientiane can be found here: https://www.flickr.com/photos/132802327@N02/albums/72157661182337840 

Vang Vieng

Sleepy eyed, we emerged from the bus at 5am onto a deserted road in Vang Vieng. After a check of the map, we discovered that the main guest house area was only a 15 minute walk away. So despite the tuk tuk driver's protests, us, the Italian couple and another guy from Holland began walking along the dark road, Jonno with his phone in hand to be the map reader. A few meters down the road and I heard some angry mutterings behind me. I turned around to find Jonno trying to pick up his phone from the floor- it had come out of its case and fallen on the road, causing the screen to smash. If he wasn't so tired I would have moved out of the way quickly in case he turned into a rampaging bull, but instead he just tried to brush off the loose bits of broken glass to try and see the rest of the map. We arrived at the road where the guest houses began, tried one but it was full, tried another but they wanted to charge us extra for an early check in, and then tried a third which, like goldilocks also discovered, was just right. We hopped into bed and got a few hours more sleep before trying to work out the extent of the damage of Jonno's poor phone.

It turned out that part from the screen everything else was working okay, but with the chance of finding somewhere to repair the screen being very slim, it looked like new phone purchase was in order, Not only that, but part of my screen had also stopped responding a few days before, so in fact we needed two new phones. A bit of a pain but at least we have been under budget for most days and we were sure to find some cheap phones in Southeast Asia. 

Poor phone!

The town of Vang Vieng is most well known for something called Tubing, which is effectively going down a river with beautiful scenery in a rubber ring. However, it was not this aspect that has attracted so many tourists and travellers, but the fact that all along the river were bars and pubs, with very cheap drinks and often giving out free shots. Added onto that the bars had constructed swings and platforms that the wasted tourists could jump from into the river, plus a very strong current, and it’s no wonder that in 2011 alone 27 people died while tubing. The government decided in 2012 that this many tourists dying might not be a very good thing, and so ordered the bars to close down except for a couple who then were supposed to have lots of restrictions put upon them. This has meant that far less people now visit, and the town is left with lots of bars that are pretty much deserted.

 A good article on the effect of the tubing on Vang Vieng:

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2012/apr/07/vang-vieng-laos-party-town

However, never fear, because another group of people have shown a great interest in Vang Vieng. A Korean company decided to do a programme/advert in Vang Vieng, to which the Koreans responded by flocking there in huge numbers, often in matching t-shirts or wearing life jackets and extreme sports wear while walking down the high street in town. So the town now has a new purpose. 

We weren’t quite sure what our reason for going was, more out of curiosity than anything else probably, as to what this strange mix of deserted bars with big groups of Koreans walking past would be like. So when we felt a bit more rested, we went out to explore.

It was pretty much as described, and we spent a while wandering the streets, stopping every couple of hours for a fruit shake as the weather was pretty hot. One cafe we found played a constant roll of 'Friends', to which the cafe over the road saw that this was good for business so they too began playing 'Friends'. Nothing like being surrounded by traditional culture.

In the evening we found a pizza restaurant and decided to treat ourselves to some western food. Alongside the menu came another page of writing, describing all sorts of drugs they could slip into food or drink for you, including the happy pizza which was a special kind of mushroom pizza. Behind us a group of guys were laughing hysterically, I have no idea why.

We had heard that Vang Vieng was also good for seeing caves and waterfalls, not that we hadn’t seen many of these already but it gave us something to do. Apparently there was one where you could rent a tube as the cave was filled with water, and float through it. This sounded a bit different, so we thought we would give it a go. We rented another horrendous semi-automatic bike for a day and set off with a written set of directions from a travel website.

The directions said the cave would be about 15 km out of town and there would be a sign for the 'water cave', but 45 minutes in and there was still no sign to be seen. We assumed we missed the sign so turned back, but we arrived back in town again and had seen no sign on the way back either. We tried asking a few of the locals but they spoke no English and shook their head when we said 'water cave'- it did not say what it might be called in Lao and we hadn't looked it up. So we decided to head back towards the hotel to find some Wi-Fi to look it up, and once we had the Lao name for the water cave we set off again. After what was about 15km and still no sign we stopped and asked another local who pointed us in the direction- it was around the place we had turned around earlier. 

Along the way we saw another sign for a cave, which we thought we might as well check out. After parking up, the signs lead us across a tiny wobbly bridge over the river and down some more path. We had to go past one of the tubing bars which was still open which was basically deserted but with loud dance music playing anyway, and soon after we came to the entrance. We paid an entrance ticket, were handed 2 torches and pointed in the direction of up. After a 20 minute climb we reached the cave, which seemed to have nobody else in it. The climb down into the cave was steep and slippery, and it was almost completely dark except for our torch lights and the faint light of the cave entrance in the distance. The centre of the cave had a large pool of water in it, and while leaping between rocks sticking out of the water we almost expected to find a Horcrux or at least Dumbledore down there. 

We climbed back up, found the bike again and carried on until we finally spotted a tiny sign with 'water cave' written on it, and turned into the dirt road to get there. Unfortunately, it being the rainy season, this wasn’t as easy as it should have been to drive down this road and again we were faced with huge muddy puddles that spanned across the whole path and we slipped and slid through them, feeling very unsteady on an already unreliable bike.

We got to what looked like an entrance booth on a bridge, and assuming it was the entrance to the cave just across the bridge, we parked the bike and paid the 2 pounds to get in. We were not sure what to do with my bag and where to get the tube from but we guessed it would be just around the corner. After crossing the bridge and walking a bit further, we realised that we had just paid for the bridge crossing and nothing else. We carried on a bit further and came to a small village with a signpost for some caves. Not being too sure which one was the water cave, we asked a rugged looking guy who had been following us for about 5 minutes. Expecting him to point to a direction, he beckoned us and started walking, so we followed. We followed him through a village, through some rice paddies and down some more paths, where we passed a few water) pipes draining out into the ground and he exclaimed 'waterfall!' and found this extremely funny. After another few minutes we reached a big sign for the water cave. This was obviously a popular spot for the Korean tourists, as there were swarms of them here. We asked where the entrance for the water cave was, and were told that unfortunately the water cave had too much water so was closed at the moment. If we wanted to we could visit a different cave where you could wade through some water. This didn't really sound as appealing, so we turned around and started back towards the bike. The rugged man began following us now, asking for some payment for bringing us here, even though he knew it was closed and could have told us this in the first place. So we picked up the pace, and walked as quickly as we could back through the fields and back to the bike. Not a great success considering we had spent half of the day searching for a place that wasn't accessible anyway. 

The other destination on our list for the day was a place called 'blue lagoon'. Apparently it was a beautiful place to chill out and swim, which sounded pretty good to us as we were now hot and tired. To get there, we had to drive all the way back through town, and then follow a path there. We managed to get back to town okay, and eventually found the direction to the lagoon. We had to cross a bridge first, which was a wooden structure which had two raised planks on each side and a lower plank in the middle. Before you got on the bridge a split second decision needed to be made as to which path to take- the raised planks were narrower so you had to keep the bike in a perfectly straight line. The lower one was wider but put you at risk of oncoming traffic as it was right in the middle. Jonno chose the centre one, which was fine until he thought he saw a vehicle coming towards us, and tried to swerve to the side. Unfortunately this didn't go as smoothly as intended, the bike wheel did not manage the step up side on, and the bike came sliding the floor, bringing us down with it. Luckily we were only on a wooden bridge, so only came out with a few bruises and the bike wasn't that damaged, but it did shake us up for a bit. But we didn’t have much time and had to continue to the lagoon. Another issue- we were a bit low on fuel, but it seemed like it would be enough to get us there and back as we didn’t think it would be too far.

The path was a lot longer than expected and the conditions deteriorated fairly rapidly, turning into another deadly slippery mud slide where we had to try and weave around to find the best parts of the road which was generally pretty bad anyway. We finally reached the lagoon entrance, and had either come at the wrong time of year or it had been falsely advertised- it seemed more of an oversized brown puddle. Nevertheless, we had struggled a lot to get here so we just wanted to chill for a bit. This was another popular spot for the Koreans, and a gaggle of them were crowded around one part, where a tree branch was hanging over the water and some of them were taking turns to tentatively jump off it into the water, while the others make a loud 'oooooooo' sound. 

What the Blue Lagoon apparently was supposed to look like...

....VS what it was actually like

Koreans jumping from trees

There were some huts by the side of the water, we claimed one for our own and I went to test out the water. I slid down the muddy bank into the swirling brown liquid, and soon realised if I didn't keep swimming against the current then I would be carried off with it. Our entrance ticket also allowed us access to the on-site cave, so we thought we might as well heck it out. After another sweaty climb we reached it, and it turned out to be a fairly disappointing one- a big hole in a rock.

Standard cave

We then looked at the time and realized that 1) The area would be closing in about 5 minutes, and 2) It would be getting dark in about half an hour and we had the horrendous road to tackle again, and we didn’t need the added difficulty of doing it in darkness. So we hurried back down the rocks and hopped back on the bike. Our fuel gauge was now on empty, and there was nowhere that looked even remotely like it would sell fuel down the dirt tracks, so this added another element of stress that we might run out at any minute and have to wheel the bike 12km to the nearest road.

I can safely say this was definitely not one of my favourite bike experiences, and even though Jonno had mentioned a few days prior that the idea of dirt biking appealed to him, he was pretty stressed too. The few times I looked to the sides I could see some amazing scenery and a beautiful sunset, but there was no time to stop and appreciate it and we were definitely not in the right frame of mind for looking at scenery. We just wanted to make it back. Then the fuel gauge went below the ‘E’ and I was convinced the bike would sputter to a halt at any minute, but miraculously it made it through and we reached the road and breathed a huge sigh of relief. Another two minutes down the road and we were back at the scooter rental place, hoping they wouldn’t notice that the wing mirror was slightly out of place from where we came off (luckily they didn’t).

The following day we had planned to give the tubing a try, even though we were not going to be getting wasted at the bars along the river we thought a gentle drift down the river would be quite nice. We walked into town and went to find the tube rental area. We discovered that the price of the tube rental was more than we initially expected (about 5 pounds per tube with a 10 pound deposit) and we would have to pay extra to rent a waterproof bag. They were selling mini waterproof bags over the road for a lot cheaper so we decided to buy one of those and leave the rest of the things at the guest house. As I went upstairs to put the things in the room, Jonno stayed in the reception area and started talking to the Italian couple that we had met on the bus about what they had been doing in Vang Vieng. I came back down and joined in the conversation, and soon we had settled into chairs next to them and made ourselves a coffee from the free machine. They had been travelling for almost a year, and worked for a while in Australia, which we wanted a bit more information on. They brought down their bags from their room to check out, and we were amazed at how little they had with them- the size of their main luggage was about the same size of our smaller backpacks. We asked them their secret, and basically it was just that they didn’t have anything! Any warm clothes they used in Australia they gave away, and left themselves with basically 3 changes of clothes. After seeing that it can be done, we did try to be ruthless and throw some things in our luggage out, but still have not achieved anything near that small!

After a few more hours of chatting, we were all ready for lunch and seeing as it was probably too late to start tubing, we decided just to stay with the Italian couple and have lunch with them. We have spoken to a few people since who went tubing, apparently it was good for getting extremely drunk but the bars tried to keep people there so they would miss the 6pm deadline to return the tubes and have to lose their deposit. Also we were told that it was pretty scary at times as the current was so strong and people narrowly missed colliding with rocks, so we probably chose the safer option! So even though the government have tried to put restrictions in place it was obviously still a problem. We spent the rest of the afternoon relaxing, and booked our next bus to Vientiane for the next morning. We were not that taken with Vang Vieng really, mostly because we are neither Korean nor the kind of people that go out and get wasted every night, so it was time to move on. 

(Apologies for the lack of photos, the ones on my phone did not get saved on the laptop before it was sent home and we didn't get chance to take many photos while negotiating the muddy tracks on the bike)