Vang Vieng

Vang Vieng is another one of Laos‘ backpacker hotspots and touristy throughout. I remembered it as the tubing place where you sit in a tube, float down the Nam Song river and get off at the various riverside tubing bars for drinks and food (well, mainly drinks). Within the past ten years I last visited, this main tourist attraction was cut short (even forbidden completely for some time) by the local government because quite a number of deaths occurred due to alcohol and drug abuse during tubing. Tubing is allowed again but apparently, many of the riverside bars have been shut down and we did not see a lot of tubers - we also decided not to do it.
Anyways, the landscape surrounding Vang Vieng has enough to discover that you will not get bored! Similar to Ninh Binh (Tam Coc) in northern Vietnam, the landscape is dominated by rough carst mountains, many caves and some possibilities to swim. So instead of tubing we opted for hiking a few of the viewpoints and visiting some caves, including my very favorite cave Phu Kham ❤️ an overall beautiful experience and a great way to get some physical activity back into our itinerary ;) Gilles was a bit unlucky to catch a bad cold the day before our journey to Vang Vieng but tough as he is he still climbed all the viewpoints 💪🏼 we never saw him (or someone else, to be honest) sweat so much in our lifes though 🙈 detox at its finest! All in all, we very much liked Vang Vieng and highly recommend it!Read more