This is one strange town. Vang Vieng is now firmly on the backpacker map and its pretty hard to figure out how the hell the place ended up like this!
The town is set very picturesquely on the banks of a river surrounded by beautiful limestone cliffs, and is well placed about halfway between Vientiane, the capital, and Luang Phabang, the most popular tourist destination in Laos. But that hardly seems the reason why the place is packed with young travellers. The reason seems firmly centered around the tubing phenomenon. You can hire a tube here for a day and float down river stopping off at one little bamboo pub after the next. Each bar serves cheap beer and free lao lao (the local rice spirit) shots, and also all have an array of zip lines and crazily high swings over the river. I would love to add some photos from the 3 days of tubing I've done here but I haven't been mad enough to even contemplate taking a camera along!
Another really strange phenomenon is the Friends bars. Every second restaurant/bar in this town shows 24/7 re-runs of Friends episodes. Don't get me wrong, I love watching Friends, but its still really strange!
Tomorrow I'm heading northeast to Phonsavan in order to see the Plain of Jars, and to try to get away from the masses of British students on summer holidays. They've been fun but enough is enough...
I promise to add photos in my next post.
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