Landlocked Laos - Vientiane & Vang Vieng

I landed in Vientiane, Laos and the sun was shining which was great after the overcast weather in North Vietnam. There is an eerie silence here - oh, no there isn't, it's just because no-one toots their horn every two seconds! What a relief after Vietnam's mental roads - too bad there is very little to do. Vientiane is actually the capital of Laos, but it's about the size of a small town in the UK, so I wandered round it in pretty quickly. It's a pleasant place but there's not a lot going on. I cycled to a temple and a sort of Asian Arc de Triomphe which was also quite nice. One of the main things, Buddha Park, is ironically about 20 miles away from the city. It's basically a football pitch-sized field with lots of different Buddha statues. Apparently a monk one day just went a bit rougue and started building them all; must have taken him a while as there are about 100 and some are massive.

The following day I boarded the bus to Vang Vieng, and an uncomfortable and bumpy ride later we arrived. What a contrast - although less mad than it used to be, it's still definitely a party town. It was once famous for it's insanity with drugs, booze and tubing on the river, but when about 30 backpackers died one year, the government shut a lot of the madness down - understable, death probably isn't the best tourist attraction.☠ You can still go tubing i.e. floating down the river to a few bars which was good fun and a nod to the towns history, plus you can still find drug menus in some of the cafes which is quite weird to see so blatantly promoted alongside pizza. The tubing was cool but less floating and more bar-crawl. I would have liked to stay in the tube for a bit longer as no sooner did you get in and settled you got out again.

Vang Veing is also really beautiful with massive karst rocks and a selection of caves and stunning mountains - riding around it was really nice and I can't not mention the sandwiches. Yes that's right sandwiches - unbelievable! Vietnam's were good but these were something else - massive rolls filled to the brim with meat, salad, cheese, sauces etc. They are some of the best sandwiches I've ever had and for about £1.50, I must have had about ten in the few days I was there.

On one day we cycled to a cave based on a sign that suggested you could swim in clear water at the bottom, the cave was ridiculously dark and narrow and the swimming 'lake' was actually a tiny muddy puddle so we passed. False advertising me thinks! There's also a few lagoons in Vang Vieng. Arriving at the first one, we were greeted with literally hundreds of Asian tourists, many wearing a full set of clothes to avoid the sun - one guy was genuinely swimming in jeans! There was a big jump you could do into the water about eight meters high so we did that then watched the other tourists clumsily jumping in. A girl took hold of a rope swing and two seconds later fell flat on her face in the water. 😂 She was fine and repeated the fall again almost immediately.

The next day we rented mopeds and went to the third lagoon - apparently the better one. It took ages and was a very laborious journey as the roads are poor with rocks and potholes everywhere, so you could only go very slowly - moped scooters are definitely not made for off-roading. The lagoon was nice though, and a little less busy with just a smattering of fully clothed Asian tourists this time, although one man was wearing a thick hoody, it was 38 degrees! 😩 There was a cool rope swing into the water and a raft that might as well have been made out if bricks it was so badly tied together - still a nice place to spend the day.

I nipped out in the evening for my obligatory sandwich and on the way back a mother was attempting to hit her misbehaving child with a broom - she kept missing him and he cheekily taunted her untiil she managed to whack him on the head pretty hard, he cried the entire street down - I could still hear him as I walked back around the corner, poor fella.

Another (likely) uncomfortable bus journey awaits to Luang Phra Bang now.Read more