Vang Vieng

So far I've written about the time I spent in Vientiane living/hanging out with Tony's family. In 95% of the restaurants and nightclubs we went to, we were the only white people. I'd be lying if I said I didn't enjoy the curious stares, giggles and pointing fingers we received throughout Vientiane.  It's nice being speical. Especially the kind of speical where pretty girls whistle at you.

Not everywhere in Laos is like Vientiane. Right on the Southeast Asian tourist trail is Vang Vieng, a city virtually built by and for backpacker tourists. It's not an exaggeration that any traveler in Southeast Asia under thirty has been or is going to Vang Vieng. It's a legend, a right of passage, and everyone goes there--myself included.

Vang Vieng

Vang Vieng is a party town. It's beautiful, yes, all mountains and red dirt roads and lush green forest, but the real attraction is tubing down the river. Someone drives you up stream a few miles, you hop on a tube, and then you float on your merry way...

And stop at one of the dozens of bars lining the river.  This isn't a nature retreat--it's an all day party. The average Vang Vienger wakes up around 1 or 2 still hungover, sits around in a "family guy" bar (I'll explain later) enjoying aWestern breakfast, and then goes tubing for the second, third, or tenth day in a row.

The bars lining the river blast club, house, and techno music.  Foreigners, commonly Canadians or Australians being paid in alcohol or food, shout drink specials over loudspeakers and try to rope you in... literally, some of them have lassos that they use on your tubes. It's a day long party that lasts until dark--until the party moves back into town and late into the night.

It's hard not to get drunk here.  Bars offer you free shots of the local whiskey. Buy one get one free deals are guaranteed (and that "one" probably costs $1 or less). Bucket deals are everywhere, filled with indeterminate amounts of liquor. It's the ultimate destination for the international spring break crowd.

You too can fly 8000 miles to hang out with these people.

What a fucking joke.

First, it should be mentioned that I didn't go tubing. I wanted to, and I'm sure it's fun, but it had been raining for days prior to our arrival and the current was dangerously fast--a couple bridges had actually been destroyed. That didn't stop anyone else from going though, and the results were not pretty.

Fucking around in a river while drinking heavily is obviously dangerous in itself, regardless of water level.  Every year multiple people die in Vang Vieng, and it could be from anything--hitting your head on a rock (common when people jump off the rope swings), getting caught in a bad current, or simply being too drunk to swim well. Those horror stories aren't particularly off putting to me--I'm a good swimmer, pretty level-headed, and I do stupid shit without thinking twice all the time. Pretty much anything fun has horror stories accompanying it--but it's not going happen to me, right?

What scared me out of it were the multiple, first-hand injuries I observed when we first arrived.  I must've seen at least five really ugly ones.  A girl with her entire head wrapped in gauze, crying, blood leaking from an eye patch. A guy with a huge six inch gash in his leg.  It seemed every other person had gotten fucked up in some way or another.

So we didn't go. We went to a nearly deserted bar early that night just to relax and have a beer. There is a brief lull period between when the tubers come back and when they go out  when the town seems dead.  A couple of pretty Asian girls played pool (re: prostitutes), a few people lounged on cushiony chairs, and that was it.

The owner was a Canadian guy in his late 20's named JT, and he was pretty stoned and drunk. We knew this because he loudly proclaimed it twice. He plopped down on a cushion next to us and asked what we wanted.

"Just a round of beers," I said, looking at the menu.

"Cool cool.  Just so you know we've got pot joints for four US, opium joints for five, smoothies seven, mushroom shakes ten, and we don't sell yabba here but if you're looking... JT knows a guy."

(Point of reference: yabba translates to "crazy medicine" in Thai, and its a bit of an epidemic there.  Yabba in English translates to methamphetamine.)

"Wait, how much was a joint?" Tony asks.

"I think we're good with beer for now," I say before JT can respond.

"Sure sure.  Just holler if you need anything."
 
If I was in Vang Vieng when I was 18, I might've bought a duffel bag of opium and called it a week. I won't lie--going on crazy drug benders still holds a certain appeal. But I've been on enough to know their is nothing on the other side. You go up, then you come down. Hard. Not worth it in a foreign country where the penalty for drug crimes is they chop your penis and feed it to you.

Ok they don't do that, you'd probably just have to pay a huge bribe.

But we stuck to alcohol anyway, so  that night passed in another fun happy drunk time, and soon enough all the rowdy white Europeans and Australians and Canadians came out, and it was another party like always in Vang Vieng.

There was something vaguely off-putting about the town, and the whole SE backpacker scene in general. Don't get me wrong, I met a lot of cool, young people during my time there.

But far more common are a variety of clueless kids in there early 20's just there to get fucked up and fuck. I sound like a hypocrite criticizing it, and maybe I am--I'm young and stupid and horny and like a good time too. But there is a lot more to traveling, a lot you can learn about yourself and the world.

I travel because other cultures fascinate me.  The food, the history, the customs, the people.   And whenever possible, I want to be hanging out with those people, doing what they do, seeing what they have to offer. If you're just getting drunk with a bunch of white people, why'd you fly 8000 miles?

Sadly, a large portion of tourists pay to do just that. You see them in Vang Vieng during the day in special bars/cafes that play Family Guy or Friends all day eating pancakes and hamburgers. I had the odd experience of standing in one particular spot where I could hear three different Family Guy episodes all converging from different bars.

Are you fucking kidding me? What the fuck are you doing watching Family Guy in Laos?! What the fuck are you doing watching family guy AT ALL?

If you've ever seen "The Beach," it was pretty much spot on about the tourist trail. A bunch of 26 year olds acting like they're 16.

But beneath all the drugs, the parties, and the retarded family guy bars, Vang Vieng is still Laos.  I spent a few minutes trying to shoo a chicken out of an ATM. The locals are friendly and quick to start a conversation. And you still see things like this

The backpackers annoyed me, but what can you do? Best to enjoy your trip, do the things you want, and not worry about anyone else.  So after a day we packed up and moved on.