Vang Vieng

Our second stop in Laos was the storied party town of Vang Vieng, which we felt some trepidation about given our experiences in Thailand. However, the Laos government reformed the infamous ‘tipsy tubing’ about 10 years ago and Vang Vieng is now more of an outdoor activities town these days—much more our speed.

We hired a tuktuk for a day and visited three of the Blue Lagoons with Jess and Ian, pals from the Mekong river boat. The roads were atrocious and the tuktuk has no meaningful suspension. Dan pulled a muscle in his shoulder hanging on in the tuktuk. We also had to ford a river where a bridge had collapsed, which doesn't fill you with confidence as a passenger.

At the first lagoon, Dan twisted up in the rope swing and got his hair trapped; he's still not used to dealing with flowing locks yet. Having lost two inches off the back of his head, Dan then instigated a 'lagoon crawl' starting with the first beer at 9:30am. We are now absolutely certain that Beerlao is the superior beer, despite the earnest efforts of the recently established Vang Vieng Lager.

Despite the consistently oppressive heat, we opted for a high-octane second day, hiring mountain bikes and cycling out to a couple of hike points. We were, of course, the only muppets on bicycles, sweating sunscreen into our burning eyes as locals and tourists buzzed past on scooters. We attempted one hike but decided that it was too overgrown and we did not want to risk becoming a UXO stat. Instead, we cycled even further out, to the famous Nam Xay hike and hauled our sorry selves up some serious elevation. We posed for the ubiquitous bike and flag shot, and hustled back down for ice cream. Chelsea crawled on all fours like a crab to protect her still-healing sprained ankle 🦀

After indulging in some much needed pool time in the afternoon, we eventually stirred our battered bodies to get massages, unwittingly signing up for more battering. The traditional Lao massage is similar to the Thai, but with some additional pretzel manoeuvring. This was particularly amusing as Dan was issued with a minuscule pair of net panties that concealed *nothing*. We also had salt body scrubs, which revealed every small cut and minor sunburn in agonising clarity. Once flayed, we cycled gingerly over to a rooftop bar, and watched as a spectacular thunderstorm moved in across the dragon’s teeth mountains, sending us scurrying indoors.

There are a couple of long travel days ahead, taking the Chinese-built bullet train to the capital, and then a 13hr overnight bus to do the same distance again to get south. Wish us luck!もっと詳しく