Next we got a minibus to Vang vieng, which in true Laos style was late, slow and pretty cramped. But 5 hours later we arrived and managed to bag the last room in the hostel we had been recommended, which was more like a hotel than a hostel! We met a bunch of people and headed off to the blue lagoon for the afternoon. Spent the afternoon relaxing and I managed to work up to jumping in off the 5m branch of an overhanging tree! Trust me when i say it looks pretty high when you're up there.
For pure comedy value! Despite being infamous for tubing, vang vieng is just beautiful, and the views were pretty immense.
The next day was pretty action packed! We went ziplining in the jungle in the morning, and we were the only 2 doing it so basically got our own private session with 9 zip lines, 3 bridges and then they basically let you freefall off the last platform- great fun!
In the afternoon we went tubing- which is what Vang vieng is famous for! basically you float down the river in a tractor inner tube and stop at various bars along the way. While much tamer than it used to be (people don't tend to die anymore) the bars are slowly returning and it was still a lot of fun! We started at about 2pm....Lao Lao whiskey fruit shakes are my new drink of choice! We didn't know how far it was until the end and as it was getting dark rapidly we decided to call it quits and get out the river when we saw a sign for a Tuk Tuk. A quick shower, dinner and a few more drinks later and it was off to the jungle party. Which turned out to be less of a jungle and more of someone's back yard, but it was still good fun. No pictures from my camera of tubing as I didn't want to risk getting it wet, but one of the Aussie girls we were with had a go pro so there may be some pictures from hers.
We had booked the bus to the Laos capital of Vientiane for the next morning, but instead got given a minibus, luckily not so busy this time! However Laos roads are not in the best of shaped and I got some serious air sitting in the back, and a pretty bruised bum. We just had the afternoon in Vientiane, and visited the COPE centre. This exhibition was all about the unexplored ordanance left in Laos, and how it is still affecting people now. The cope centre is inviolved in giving artificial limbs and rehab to those who have been injured. It was very interesting but also very sad and sobering when you hear that Laos had 580,000 bombing missions carried out by USA, and up to 1/3 were unexploded at the end of the war.
Finally it has been a pretty long day travelling today! We got up at 4 for our 6.30am flight to Pakse... Which was 2 hours delayed as usual. We then went to the 'bus' station to get the '2hr' bus to Si Phan Don (or 4000 Islands as it is known)... Turned out to be a 4 hour journey in the back of a truck with many Lao people, furniture and chicken feed.
No comments:
Post a Comment