For the last couple of days, Eric and I have been debating whether or not to make the 12-hour bus ride to Vientiane all at once or to break it up with a small stopover in Vang Vieng.
Vang Vieng – or “V-V” for short – is known as a backpacker hub and a party town. The major attraction is “tubing”, which basically involves floating down a river in a rubber tube and stopping at every waterside bar along the way for beer and free shots. Although this really isn’t our scene, we figure we might as well check out the place anyway because from what I remember, the landscape around the town is beautiful.
Plus we have a serious craving for pizza and we know we’ll be able to find it there.
So at 7:30am we hop on a bus and arrive in Vang Vieng 7 hours later.
I’m amazed by how much it has grown since I was last there in 2005 – there are tourists everywhere!
We find a very nice guesthouse to crash at and then wander about in search of pizza. We easily find it, though to our waiter’s dismay we only order the regular pizza and not the “happy pizza” V-V is also famous for.
We opt not to join in the tubing and instead rent bicycles and peddle around the countryside, checking out the small villages, rice fields and amazing limestone cliffs. We have a great time but we both think that V-V has lost its Laos feel to the backpacker world and decide to head to Vientiane the next day.
Once again we wake up really early and catch a bus. We’re up so early in fact that we’re actually awake before the roosters. I think if we knew where they were kept, we would have gone and yelled at them… let’s see how they like it.
We arrive in Vientiane and after finding a guesthouse and having a late breakfast, we begin the search for a barber. It’s been a few months since Eric’s last haircut and he really wants one.
We have little luck searching together, so I return to the guesthouse to relax and Eric continues without me. Eventually, he returns with a new look and well, let’s just say his head may look smaller in the photos to come… but don’t worry, it’s not.
Vientiane is the capital of Laos and is a very interesting city at the moment. It seems to be in the middle of a transition as there’s a lot of construction happening, particularly on the waterfront. We rent some bicycles and cruise around, exploring the city.
Because of the French influence, it contains some great building stock, with the most obvious example being the replica Arc de Triomphe, officially called Patuxai. “Patuxai” was built in 1969 using cement donated by the United States to commemorate Laotians who died in pre-revolutionary wars. Of course, the fun part about that is the US had donated the cement to be used to build an airport. It’s actually quite impressive and we enjoy cruising around it on our hot wheels.
We also visit Wat Si Saket, the oldest temple in Vientiane. Although we’re starting to feel “templed out”, it’s definitely worth the visit. The interior walls of the cloister contain hundreds of niches housing silver and ceramic Buddha images and we snap way too many photographs… god bless digital cameras.
We spend our last night in Laos calling our families and enjoying our new favourite street food, banana pancakes.
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