Road Trip Continued - Vang Vieng, Laos
Harmonie
Don and Anne Myers
Tue 28 Feb 2012 03:11
| 18:55.36N 102:26.72E
January 22, 2012 After two days in Phonsavan with the jars and bomb craters, Michael, Jackie, Don and I loaded into a different, but just as tired, minivan with a new driver (our other driver had to get back to IT class in Luang Prabang). Our new driver spoke very little English, was less of a horn-tooter, and appeared to have an aversion to downshifting. Every time our poor old minivan was faced with a hill, our driver waited until the pitiful thing shuttered in pain before finally shifting down a gear. By that time, it was too late, and one gear wasn't enough. On every hill, the process repeated itself - painful shutter, downshift one gear; painful shutter, downshift one gear - until the minivan crawled over the hill crest and let out a huge sigh of relief before coasting down the other side. Other than this strange downshifting affliction, our driver was good. We backtracked west three hours along Route 7 to the Route 13 junction, stopped for tea, gave the market and its fried rats a miss, and continued south on Route 13 three, or four, or was it five? more hours to Vang Vieng. This stretch was the worst bit of Route 13. There were so many giant swaths of pitted red dirt where the pavement used to be that all the cars, trucks, motorcycles, and motorcycle drivers were completely covered in a thick layer of red dust. We were fine inside our tired minivan with the air conditioning running, but we did worry about all the villagers living two feet from the road and breathing in red dust for six months of every year during the dry season. They must be used to crunching on red dirt grit in all their food and constantly looking feverish with red tinted skin. As awful as the dry season dust must be, we did wonder if they like the monsoon season mud better or worse. The scenery, again, was gorgeous with jagged mountains all around shrouded in heavy mist. As taxing as the ride was on our backsides (some of whose were a bit sore as a result of a bout with the dreaded 'turista' trots), we were glad to have seen so much of Laos up close and personal. We could have flown from Luang Prabang to Phonsavan and Vientiane, but we would have missed a great deal of the 'real' Laos - village life unspoiled by tourists, spectacular mountain and river views, noodle soup lunches eaten with recycled chopsticks, squat toilets, and fried rats. We stopped for the night in Vang Vieng before carrying on the next morning - same driver, same minivan, same bumpy Route 13 - to the Laos capital, Vientiane. Vang Vieng is known as the Laos backpacker's paradise. It was one of the first venues opened to tourism (and for good reason, it's a spectacular spot), and has since been overrun by eager youngsters looking for adventure and cheap booze. The main occupation here is tubing down the river with lots of lao-lao stops along the way. It doesn't sound all bad, but can be dangerous in the wet season when the river is much less tame. The cheap restaurants serve a weird mix of western and local food (never a good idea to mix the two), and offer 'happy' menus. We were warned by our niece Tracy, who traveled to Laos several years ago, to steer clear of the happy food. It's laced with pot and other, scarier, drugs. To us, the whole scene seemed out of step with the rest of what we'd seen in Laos. Although the town was less filled with raucous youth than we expected, the place still seemed out of touch with the serene, serious, hard-working Laos we saw everywhere else. This is the serene and serious part of Vang Vieng. Nice, huh? This is the reason Vang Vieng was one of the first Laos towns to attract tourists. The strips of ugly happy food restaurants and dumpy bars are on the other side of the river, which is behind where the photographer was standing. Next up: Basking in the glory of French colonialism in Vientiane, Laos. Anne |