VANG VIENG, LAOS

We left Luang Prabang for Vang Vieng at 6:30 this morning, traveling south for seven hours on what was supposed to be the "VIP bus"--but what I think was actually the trashy one that all the locals take. Consequently, we stopped at every little village along the way, picking up and dropping off passengers (human and canine) while our clueless driver struggled with the apparently foreign concept of shifting gears. Most of the ride was on twisting roads through the mountains, which meant some lovely scenery along the way, accompanied by a not-so-lovely soundtrack of people throwing up (the guy handing out plastic bags was kept constantly busy).

We finally made it to Vang Vieng around two in the afternoon. And guess what? It's an incredibly ugly place. Basically, it's just a strip of backpacker-oriented businesses (restaurants playing Friends reruns and selling "happy" (drug-laced) pizza, internet places, guesthouses, tour companies, etc.) along a dirty street, with piles of rubble where the sidewalks should be. Nice.

The reason all the backpackers stop here is not for the "town" itself, but for the activities in the surrounding countryside: caving, rock-climbing, kayaking, and mainly, tubing down the Nam Song River. Chris and I opted to try the latter this afternoon, which actually turned out to be pretty fun. It's exactly like tubing back in the States, except here some enterprising locals have set up a number of makeshift bars on the riverbanks where you can come ashore and drink a few Beerlaos before continuing down the river. I'm sure it would make the journey even more enjoyable, but unfortunately, we're both running out of kip (and there are no ATMs in town!), so we had to drift on by this time. The scenery was nice, though, and at one point the river winds past some jagged black mountains, which were cool to see.