Vang Vieng

Our minibus ride up from Vientiane to Vang Vieng is relatively uneventful – the countryside is fairly flat to start with; as it starts to get more hilly and interesting, unfortunately it also starts to get dark. On arrival, we make our way to the Champa Lao guesthouse on the edge of (this small) town – very quiet and comfortable. The owner greets us with a broad smile which rarely leaves his lips for the duration of our stay. We go for a short stroll to orient ourselves with our surroundings, including the river that is a stones throw away, then clamber into bed, wondering what awaits us in the daylight.

We wake to see the full beauty of this place. We are surrounded by stunning forest-clad limestone karsts, with the river gently weaving its way through, glistening in the sunlight.

The town itself is unremarkable, with lots of bars, most of which are offering free drinks (“free bucket of beer”) and showing old episodes of Friends on a large screen TV. It’s a toned down version of its previous Party Town self. Apparently the bars used to be pumping out music until 6am but there were too many people getting drunk & high and then going on to lark about in the river, which resulted in about 20 deaths a year. Eventually, the local authorities had had enough and have clamped down.

The real attraction here is the scenery and the outdoor activities that abound. We go swimming at the Blue Lagoon, including Jemima jumping off the higher of two branches of a tree into the water – it’s about 6m high but she’s determined. “I’m going to do this thing!” she says, looking down at the water below and after just a couple of seconds hesitation, in she leaps – I’m so proud of her!

We go “tubing” down the river – gently floating downstream, sitting in a truck inner tube – beautiful, relaxing, but frankly not as enjoyable as the kayaking we did later in the week. We couldn’t resist giving zip-lining a go – See Jemima and Gabriel’s blogs for more details of that!

We bump into the Australian family that we’d met at Vientiane airport: Sarah, her father Brian and her four children aged 17, 14, 12 and 4. We agreed to meet up later for a drink and after that, we spend most of our time together for the rest of the week. This works really well for both families, children quickly pairing off and playing fantastically well together, like they’ve known each other for years.