Vang Vien

Even though it was cloudy, Vang Vien was an enchanting place to arrive into, with low mist hanging over the mountains and the Mekong River flowing at their feet.  This town was infamous for the backpacker activity of tubing, which was basically a pub crawl down the Mekong in a rubber ring.  However, last year the police closed down almost all of the riverside bars due to the high death rate of travellers from drunken accidents in the water.

The much safer option of tubing minus the alcohol is still available, and we booked a day trip for our second day in Vang Vien, which included tubing into caves and kayaking along the Mekong.

So, we had another early start to catch a minibus to the site of our cave tubing. When we got off the minibus, we walked through a little village to get to the cave entrance on the water. We were given headlamps and we got into our rubber rings in the freezing water and dragged ourselves into the cave using the rope attached to the cave walls.  We pulled ourselves for 500m through the pitch black waters and then we turned around and pulled ourselves back, which provided quite the arm workout!

The cave that we tubed into

We then sat in the riverside village where we were served barbecued chicken skewers and rice for lunch followed by fresh pineapple.  

Our food being cooked

Lunch!

It was then time to get back on the minibus for a short journey to the place that we'd start our kayaking.  On the way back through the village to the bus, the guide stopped to show us a temple in a cave.  Asians will take any chance to sneak a cheeky temple into a daytrip.

Temple Cave, AKA Elephant Cave

The kayaks were two people to one kayak, so Steven and Marc got in one and Amy and Gareth got in another.  In total, we kayaked for about an hour and a half, which again proved quite tiring on the arms, especially for little Amy, but she refused to stop rowing and let Gareth do all the work!  After 40 minutes of rowing (and Gareth and Amy crashing into some rocks and getting stuck!), we stopped at one of the remaining riverside bars for a rest and a beerlao, before continuing down the river for another hour or so.

 
That evening, we soaked up the scenery at some bars in the town. There's no shortage of bars in Vang Vien, with it being a fully fledged backpacker town, but there is an 11pm bar curfew throughout the whole of Laos, so no wild nights out for us here!