One Inner Tube £3, Bucket of Whiskey £2, Day of Tubing.....Priceless
Friday, August 20, 2010
Vang Vieng is Laos version of Blackpool or Benidorm and is a backpacking mecca, home to a fast flowing river, dozens of river side bars selling literally buckets of alcohol.. A perfect place to sell tubes and tell everyone to drink their way down? Apparently so! In fact 2 weeks before we arrived a local bar owner went "tubing" as its called, only to drink/smoke too much and that was the end of him.
Thus a perfect place for Odyssey to sample some "local culture" and it was superb, it all made sense at the time anyway as I'm sure health and safety would outlaw it most places especially considering the rip slides and lack of hand rails to get out the rapids.
Vang Vieng itself doesn't have much to it apart from hundreds of British/Irish/American/Ozzies all drinking and watching Friends or Family Guy. In fact we even met a guy wearing a Hearts strip! It's good to see some Jambos in South East Asia considering how badly they travel in Europe *Boom Boom*. All in all though we would definitely come back here to endanger ourselves again.
On to Vientiane next, the capital of Laos and a wee touch of France in South East Asia. The food quality is amazing even if the price has jumped a bit from what we are used to, every corner has a coffee shop and baguette stands. Plus Phimphone Grocery which had some names we even recognised from back home including Boots and Kettle Chips.
Spent the first day tuk tukking around the sights including the Pha That Luang (Fat Cat Pat as I call it), Buddha Park and even a version of the Arc de Triomphe. Built using concrete donated by America to build a runway during the Vietnam war, the government used it instead to build this Monument and is now known as the vertical runway. Sneaky!
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More photos on the signpost!
Vang Vieng itself doesn't have much to it apart from hundreds of British/Irish/American/Ozzies all drinking and watching Friends or Family Guy. In fact we even met a guy wearing a Hearts strip! It's good to see some Jambos in South East Asia considering how badly they travel in Europe *Boom Boom*. All in all though we would definitely come back here to endanger ourselves again.
On to Vientiane next, the capital of Laos and a wee touch of France in South East Asia. The food quality is amazing even if the price has jumped a bit from what we are used to, every corner has a coffee shop and baguette stands. Plus Phimphone Grocery which had some names we even recognised from back home including Boots and Kettle Chips.
Spent the first day tuk tukking around the sights including the Pha That Luang (Fat Cat Pat as I call it), Buddha Park and even a version of the Arc de Triomphe. Built using concrete donated by America to build a runway during the Vietnam war, the government used it instead to build this Monument and is now known as the vertical runway. Sneaky!
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Our Tuk Tuk for the day
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Pha That Luang
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Buddha Park
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"Arc de Triomphe"
Vientiane was also the venue for a new Odyssey fashion first- board shorts and bowling shoes. I don't see it taking off but it worked anyway while we embarrassed ourselves trying to bowl even if a few of us managed to injure themselves falling over a lot on the surprisingly slippy alleys.
More photos on the signpost!
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