Vang Vieng

Vang Vieng used to be the party hotspot in Laos and for some time in all over South East Asia due to it's infamous river tubing including all sorts of drugs. But after several deaths on the unpredictable river the government shut down the whole party business basically overnight.
Now there's a bit of a party scene left and at some spots you can still get drugs. And it's also still possible to tube down the river. We decided to book a full day tour that includes the stuff we want to do. Besides that we had a relaxed evening just visiting the night market and having a beer at our hostel.
The next day we got picked up to go to the ziplines. Along us there were about 25 more people but it wasn't too crowded and we really enjoyed the ziplines leading through the jungles. Then it was time to get into the tube and let us gently float down the river. That was the plan but then it turned out to become a quite rough and pretty fast tour due to the heavy rains lately. It was still great fun even though Julia missed the exit and needed to be "saved" by our guide 😁 The last leg of our trip got us into a buggy to make a 20km journey to a spring water. This turned out to be the highlight of the day! We were covered in mud and it was so much fun going through the gigantic potholes... That's definitely more enjoyable after rainfalls 🙂 The Blue Lagoon was a great refreshment and possibility to get clean again.
On our way back three of the five buggies broke down due to different issues... And we were the last group of the day which meant that it took forever to get us "rescued". One of our fellow tour group participants was so nice to give us the last working buggy so we could return to the tour operator. We came home with more than three hours delay but it didn't really matter as we didn't have any plans. We got rid of the mud and then went out for a mushroom pizza and pineapple shake.Read more