Vang Vieng, Laos

We took the shortest bus we had so far. A couple of hours between Vientiane and Vang Vieng. Vang Vieng is a small town, known to be the party town. Several years ago, it was known to have several accidents a year with tourists intoxicated doing dangerous activities. But the authorities decided to take actions, and it seems to be better now. It is still a party town but with a bit more rules. The town is very touristic, with guesthouse and restaurants everywhere, and place to book tours. A lot of buildings are being built as well, and I am wondering if the nature, restful, fun vibes are going to stay for long here or if it is going to become a town with big, massive hotels (as there are already a few).
But we did not come here to party, but to see the beautiful landscapes around and it did not disappoint.
On the first day here, we did our regular tour of the area. For dinner, Emma did some research on her computer to find a vegetarian restaurant, find where it was on the map, she memorized the way and took us there, all by herself. She did excellent! And the restaurant was delicious with a huge vegetarian selection! I love watching them being more and more confident. I love the learning that they are both doing.
The next day, we booked a tour (again, I don’t know why because I don’t like tour!!!). But it does show us some of the things we can do around.
So on that day, we went cave tubing: imaging yourself on a big floatie on a river which run under a mountain, you are holding a cable to pull yourself along and float around the cave. It is fun, but it was pretty short. We did that for 10 minutes max, so I was a bit disappointed. I love cave and could have stay longer.
After that we saw a small cave with a “elephant shaped’ stalagmite. Cute but yeah, could have done something else.
Then they took us ziplining. Well we were supposed to go the 4 of us, but after a steep walk to get to the beginning of the zipline high in the mountain, Emma realised she couldn’t do it. It was way too high for her. After a little bit of talk, she said it was above her limit and she couldn’t do it, so Kev and Andrew went, and Andrew loved it! He is an adrenaline seeker!!! Emma and I went back down to wait for them. We might try again another zipline but not as high. To be honest, being scared of height, I was fricking out too, but was keen on trying. Maybe the lowest one will be better for me too!!
Then we went kayaking. It was a bit more dangerous that the last time we did kayaking (in Kratie, Cambodia looking for dolphin). As I said this is a party town and one of the activity, is to float around the river on big floaties while drinking some beers. So when you are kayaking, you need to go around them. I am not bad at kayaking but this is next level!!! A bit too stressful for me. Then we went to one of the blue lagoon (there are several around) to have a swim in blue water, a bit cold but fun! But there again, obviously there are a lot of people. But we still have fun.
The next day, we rented a buggee to be able to go where we wanted and it was one of the best day of the trip for me. We drove to one of the viewpoint. The hike was hard, steep, and I was huffing and puffing, but when you reach the top: it is so worth it! The views are magnificent. For some reason, there is things at the top where you can take pictures on with the view behind you. The first one had a motorbike. The second one we went, had a plane! I don’t know how they brought it up!!!
The kids amazed me during the hikes. Andrew as always has limitless energy and was pretty much always at the front. Emma, despite it being difficult for her, powered on and made it to the top with no complaint. I am incredibly proud of her.
On our second hike, we found caves on the way up. When I was a child, I use to do summer camp and always tried to have some caves exploration in them because I love caves! It was so nice doing that again. Caves are magical, beautiful, secretive, filled with discovery. It was the best time of the day for me.
The next day, my body reminded me of some muscles I forgot I had! A little bit in pain but it was so worth it. But yeah, rest day! A bit of school work, blogging, and rest! Well this is what was planned! During the day, I started feeling pretty bad and ended up being sick all day long: my day was spent spewing on the toilet, have a shower, rest in bed for a bit and repeat! Not my best day. I supposed it was a stomach bug, as Andrew spewed a couple of time during the night before, but he, being young and healthy, was all better by the morning!!! This is also part of traveling: you are exposed to bugs your body is not used to!
On the next day, I was feeling better but pretty weak as I didn’t keep any food in the day before, so we did an easy day. We just walk around the town, booked activities for the next couple of days and our next train ticket for our next adventure and that was it. Kids had lots of computer time and they loved it!
Wednesday we were back out again: caves exploring. We went to Loup cave and Hoi cave which are right next to each other. We had a tuktuk booked to get there as it is a bit far out of town to walk to it. We arrive around 8.30am and nobody was there. We could enjoy the caves all by ourselves. It is magical walking through the caves, looking at stalagmites (they go up) and stalactites (they go down), pigmentation of the rocks changing with the different minerals brought by the water, hearing the drops falling and knowing you are hearing those beautiful formation are being formed, turning all the lights off and being in complete darkness… and so much more! I love caves!!!
The 2 caves we saw were pretty different from each other: Loup Cave is full of rock formation and small hole you can try to squeeze in. Hoi Cave is a long tunnel with stalactites, we don’t know how far it goes as we didn’t quite reach the end (it was getting pretty tight, so we didn’t want to risk it!). It was awesome being by ourselves in those caves. We only saw one other tourist in the first cave. We truly enjoyed ourselves.
Then back to the hotel to deal with reality as our house, back in Townsville, has water damage due to the heavy rain there. It is hard to deal with insurance and stuff when we are far away, but we’ll manage!
Thursday, we went on a hot air balloon trip!!! Wake up early (5.15am) to be pick up by tuktuk before the sunrise. When we arrived where the balloon was getting ready, it was a bit chaos. Several balloons were being set up next to each others. I think there were around maybe 15 hot air balloons! A lot of people setting everything up and then we had to hope in the basket. Being scared of height, I was a bit apprehensive, but if I didn’t look down too much and more watching forward, I was fine. The landscapes were great. We didn’t go too far as the wind was pretty calm and stay above the town a fair bit, but the views of the mountains around were beautiful. We also saw the sun rising out behind some mountains and that was amazing as well. We stay up for around 40 minutes. It was definitely an experience. Emma said it was one of the best days of her life, despite being a bit worried before, so that is a very big win.
After that, we had a lovely breakfast and played some board games at a coffee place.
Now we are blogging, and the kids will have to do some school work at some point! Not much plan this afternoon apart packing again, as we are off tomorrow on our last stop in Laos, Luang Prabang where we will stay for 10 days.
See you there! Mel

7.2.2025. Guess what! We're packing for our next destination, yay! Talk to ya later.
Got to Vang Vieng. Looked around, had some dinner( a restaurant Emma found on Google maps and led us there). Watched a movie and went to bed.
8.2.2025. We organised a tour for today. Some tubing in a cave(very short, kinda lame), some zip lining(was too much for Em she couldn't do it), then had lunch. Did some kayaking, was the highlight of the day but chaotic as we got close to the party area. People swimming/tubing and lots of kayaks made it a bit stressful towards the end. Last part of the tour we were taken to a lagoon. Was nice, but bloody cold and people everywhere. Overall we weren't that impressed with the tour and decided we would organise our own things. When we got back to the room, we organised with the guy running the show to get a buggy tomorrow. We'll see how that goes.
9.2.2025. Picked up from our guesthouse(most companies will do that for you in SE Asia) and taken to get our buggy. You’re not allowed to drive them through town, it's ok out of town to get to hiking trails/waterfalls/lagoons. A small drive and we were at our first spot. Hiked up a mountain to the tippity top. There's a motorbike up there(how'd that get up there). Obligatory pictures and some bad commentary on my behalf and we were on our way back down. Seems harder to go back down as it's pretty steep. Once we were at the bottom we grabbed some drinks and lunch. I have had a couple of avocado smoothies now, today's was the best so far. The sandwiches we had, not so great. Back in the buggy and off to the next spot. We had planned to do a bigger, harder trail but after the first one we ruled it out. We picked another shorter one that was supposedly “moderate” with some caves. The cave was pretty good and we all enjoyed it. Now to climb to the top. This mountain has 2 peaks each with their own “thing” at the top. We decided to go up to the peak with an aeroplane first, the other has a Pegasus. After getting to the peak, having a rest and waiting to have a picture taken in the aeroplane, we decided we were too buggered to do the Pegasus peak(even Andrew) and made our way back down. Our day had slipped away, time flies when having fun and with good company. We drove our buggy the rest of the way around the circuit and back to the hire company. A little early but we didn't mind, also right on time to be dropped back at our guesthouse as the driver was dropping off more people. Time for a hot shower as we were all very dirty, especially Emma. Rested, then headed out for dinner.
10.2.2025. Today we decided to do a rest/planning/school work/blog day. Was timed well as Andrew was unwell during the night and Mel not so great today. I did some laundry and watched the Superbowl highlights with the kids. It's now lunchtime but nobody is hungry, we'll see where the rest of the day takes us.
Mel is still pretty ordinary, not hungry whatsoever. I took the kids out for a walk and some food while Mel rested.
11.2.2025. Did bugger all today as Mel is pretty crook. Organised some stuff for the next couple days and did some trip planning. Later had a nice dinner at a Frenchie restaurant.
12.2.2025. We had organised a Tuktuk(small truck with a cage and seats in the back so they can take lots of people/kayaks) to take us to some caves. A short drive later we had a cave all to ourselves(Loup cave). It started small, but soon opened up to a large cave inside with lots of stalactites(some which had fallen). We had a fair bit to explore as this cave was reasonably wide in places and with the stalactites there was more than one way to go. About 50m from the entrance of the first cave there is another(Hoi cave). We noticed alot of beehives built high above the entrance to this one, we counted 10 or more. As we entered the second cave we noticed it was very different. More narrow, and went on for ages into the mountain. It's fascinating that two caves so close to each other could be so different to each other. Later we had a nice dinner, a couple drinks(beerlao is pretty good, especially the dark) and wandered back to the room as we have an early start tomorrow.
13.2.2025. Early start today, yay! What for you ask? Hot Air balloon!!! First time for three of us. Emma was a bit worried but that didn't last long. Was fun, we were in the air for around 40mins or so. Hit a tree(gently) on the way down, and everyone had fun. It was kinda cool, not as exciting as I was expecting. To make it exciting we may have lost 1 or 2 people I suppose. It's not a buggy after all. Anyway we all had something to talk about as we walked to find somewhere to have brekky. Now back at the room, blogging and school work. Oh yeah and packing for our next destination again.
Kev

Hello people I apologize for not making crazy entrances like this all the time I post my blog, so here is a crazy entrance. I’M BACK I hear you all clapping in whatever country you are in, well thank you it warms my heart, so clap louder!!!. I can hear you but I want it louder, good, you’ve learnt how to clap properly. If any of you people out there are telling me to get to the proper part, (don’t deny it I know you are) I’ll say to you, I’ll hurry up, now enjoy. (You better).
On the 7th we went on a bus that took us to Vang Vieng, it was a very short bus, only two hours, short compared to a fourteen hour one we took to Bangkok earlier in the trip. Whatever, my mum told me that I’m going to enjoy it in Vang Veing because it has a lot of fun things to do in nature. Those fun stuff are, ziplines, hot air ballons, waterfalls, kayaking, caves, cave tubing ( cave tubing is where I hop in an inflatable donut and pull yourself with a rope throw a water cave). When we got there we found our hotel then went to find some dinner, (it was 6 o’clock), we had dinner then went home to sleep.
On the 8th we went on a tour that took us to a few different places, the first place we went was to a cave where we could do cave tubing. We didn’t go all the way to the end of the cave because it was so long it would take two days to finish it. After that we went to a cave it was a dry cave not a water cave it was pretty small so we didn’t spend much time there, after that we went to the zipline. When we got there we got into the harness and began our climb up the mountain, when we got to the top we hopped on the zipline and of we went. Sadly, Emma got a bit to scared and went back down instead of going on the ziplines but I did, it turned out to be very fun there and there wasn’t just one zipline. There was a bunch of small ziplines that connected and I went on every single one of them. After that we went to a river that we kayak in, the river was shallow and there were lots of rock me and my dad were in the same kayak and we nearly flipped over but we didn’t. After that we went to a lagoon that was very crowed so we didn’t stay there very long. When we went home we ate dinner and slept.
On the 9th we rented a buggy so we could drive around and look at mountains and stuff at the top of a mountain there was a motor bike that I can sit on and take pictures on the top of another mountain there was a plane that I can take pictures of to. I can’t explain that much about it because we did the same thing for most of the day. After that we went to the hotel and slept.
On the 10th we didn’t do much because my mum was sick, they spewed a lot, bad juju. All I really did was, write my blog, play on my computer I also was a bit sick in the night, I spewed twice. We didn’t do much so on to the next day.
On the 11th, we walked around a bunch of different streets we hadn’t been in yet, we walked around near the river pretty much we just walked around, that’s pretty much all we did. we walked a lot can’t explain much about today either. When we went back to the hotel we went to sleep.
On the 12th we went to two caves that were next to each other, well actually just the entrances where next to each other the paths inside both went in a different direction. We never actually got to the end of any of the tunnels they where both very big. Inside the caves there were rock formations everywhere it was so cool, in one of the caves, when it is the rainy season the cave fills up whit water, I could see where the water left marks. When we finished we went back to the hotel and we slept.
On the 13th we woke up very early, the reason we woke up early is because we’re going on a hot air ballon!!! It is so exiting, I’ve never been in a hot air balloon, when we went outside we got picked up by a tuktuk that would take us to the hot air balloon place. When we got there I could only see two ballons but when I was up in the sky I could see about fifteen balloons, at least. The flight lasted forty-five minutes but I wish it lasted a bit longer, that would have been better but whatever, it was still super fun. When we went home we worked on our blog after that we posted our blog and ate dinner and did what any other human child would do at night, beg there parents for a movie, oh I forgot, after that sleep.
The end 😊😉😊😉
Next episode coming sone (hopefully)……………
Andrew (9 years old)

On Friday the 7th we took a bus to Vang Veing, but it was short one this time. When we got there, we had a little walk around, I found a restaurant on my computer and led us there by myself. On Saturday the 8th we had a tour. We went cave tubing which I got a little scared about doing. We went to the elephant cave which wasn’t really a cave. we did ziplining which was terrifying, so I ended not doing it. Then we went kayaking through the river with strong currents. I think the people in the river were more dangerous than the actual river. They were just bobbing along while watching us crash into each other and rocks. After that we went to the blue lagoon and played in the water for a bit. On Sunday the 9th we rented a buggy and went to two maintains. We hiked both all the way to the tippity top. At the top of the first one is a motorbike and at the top of the second one was a plane. On Monday the 10th we did our blog and our schoolwork. Then mum got sick, so we played on our computer. Then we did some board games after. Tuesday the 11th we walked around a bit in town and looked at the lake. We didn’t do much that day. Now moving on to the next day. Aham. (Preparing to say the words.) Wednesday the 12th we went to two caves. The 1st we went to was complicated because it had lots of tunnels and we had to remember the way. The 2nd we went in was cool because it was only one tunnel but there were animals as well. This is the last day I am going to tell you about this place. Thursday the 13th we went to the place where there launch hot air balloons. I was scared when I first saw the blue flames IT SCARED THE LIVING S**T out of me. (note to parents please read the blog before showing kids.) But when we were in the air I felt completely safe. It was a joy being in the air and when it was time to get off I was sad. 😉😊
Emma (8 years old)Læs mere