Biking in Vieng Vang and the Blue Lagoon

Vang Vieng truly has magnificent mountains! I call them Suessian mountains: they are cliffs with funny round tops. Covered in bright green and pop out of nowhere! They totally belong in a Dr. Suess book.

 

(This is the view from the cheapo restaurant where we frequently ate. Awesome.)

Nestled in the suessian mountains are dramatic limestone caves, dusty villages, and natural mineral springs. Since we were still recovering from our rollercoaster of a drive to this city, we decided to take transportation into our own hands and cycle a 28 km loop which gave great views and easy access to caves.

It sounds like a great idea, huh. Well, that's what we (austin, Steph, and Germans) thought too...

The views were truly magnificent and the villages quaint. Little kids loooove to stare at Austin's beard and practice their English greetings, so they would run after our bikes or stop dead in the road and stare. The kiddos are one of my favorite things about south east Asia, and they are everywhere! At all hours!!

So the problem with our adventure was the duration and terrain. No hills, just a road full or rocks! Not gravel, not sand, large pebbles and small boulders that keep your bum off your seat until you develop blisters or loose your footing, then they abuse the undercarriage of your chassis relentlessly and ceaselessly for 15 more km. This leaves you, ok it was me, crying by the side of the road. I couldn't sit normal for two days!! Never do the full cycling adventure. Just take bikes to the blue lagoon and cave, the highlight of vieng Vang.

The mineral-filled water is deep aqua and freezing! This is mecca for the dude-bros and backpackers but is still worth going to. Austin and Philipp jumped into the lagoon from high trees and swung in from rope swings. I "iced' in the arctic waters.

We expected the cave at such a touristy location to be lame. However, this one delivered! Too cheap to rent the 'mandatory' flashlights, Austin and I just stayed real close to our pals while exploring the cave. Almost a really stupid idea: it was full of chasms, drops, low hanging formations, and worst of all, gargantuan spiders!!

Philipp was the worst person to entrust with the flashlight. He'd scuttle off to some corner and leave the three of us clinging to a dripping stalactite. In our flip flops, per usual!

The cave was enormous, and we spent over an hour exploring its depths. Honestly, I was just trying to avoid the inevitable bike ride back! Oh the horror.

Capitalists v . Communists Part 2, Transport

Much in laos does not make sense to our western minds; above all,fixed prices, shotty construction methods, and overpriced,inefficient transportation.

After the waterfall,we booked a bus for Vang Vieng, a southern granola city. The man quoted us $15 per person. "What?! Ubsurd!" Austin replied, " it is only 200 km (120 miles)! And how on earth is that supposed to take 5 hours on Laos' national highway?!"

Well, the next morning we found out just how great laos' national highway is. We were crammed into a 15 passenger Toyota Siena van (or its imaginable equivalent). We were of the thought that this would be yet another boring bus ride through some lovely verge, but reality, and serious nausea, soon hit!

In short, it was a 5 hour rollercoaster. Our driver, clearly a former formula 1 driver, managed to squeal the tires on every curve, quite the feat considering they were constant. Leftttt squeallll right squealllll left squealllllll. Constant pot holes. Dodging chickens. Passing trucks on blind curves.

We had a brief ten minute reprieve when the driver pulled over to pee. Many of our fellow torturees took this opportunity to puke. But seriously. Steph nearly joined them, surviving the ride solely through her yoga oogi breath, for which Austin loves to tease her about.

The coaster finally came to an end when the driver pulled off the road at a random location and told everyone to get out. No clear town in site. We demanded he take us to where we paid him to take us. With an Asian giggle we have learned to despise, he ran off, leaving his queasy passengers to the wolves, aka tuk tuk drivers.

Thank heavens for our tablet and map- we saw the town was only 1 km away, and, to top it off, the driver had driven though the city to take us to this viper pit of tuk tuk drivers.

Shady business Laos. You couldn't pay me enough to take that bus again.

Score: Laos 1, us 1

Capitalists v. Communists Part 1

 (Our free ride into town! haha!)

With our new found traveling friends, two Brits and two Germans, we took on Luang Prabang, a French colonial city in Laos, right on the Mekong river. These Germans and Brits were just as cheap as we were, well, nearly, and we decided to head out all together to some waterfalls outside of Luang Prabang. Of course this required another foray into the world of the tuk tuk. 

So we formulated a plan.

Whenever negotiating price for a tuk tuk the driver would quickly count all the people in the group and they would tell us a per person rate, usually several dollars per person, which was silly because it costs the same to take one person as it does to take ten. so we decided to send laura, the fiercest barterer of the Germans, over to negotiate for a taxi. The rest of us would wait out of sight for her to fix a price for the whole tuk tuk. After having agreed on the price we would then spring out of hiding and leap in the back of the taxi and demand to be taken to our location. The driver knowing we had gotten better of him just sighed and got in the truck and drove us to the waterfall.

Laos so far has let us down so I wasn't expecting anything particularly spectacular. However, when we arrived it was the most beautiful neon-blue water I'd ever seen, flowing out of the most picturesque waterfall I have ever seen. thankfully swimming was allowed, so we proceeded to jump off the waterfall swim in the lagoon and do all the things park rangers would never let you do in Yellowstone.

After this experience I was very pleased with the waterfall, and what Laos had to offer in general. It was then that we looked through the trees and noticed a path leading up to what seemed to be more waterfalls. We hiked up and found an even more beautiful waterfall and pristine lagoon sadly swimming was not allowed here. This continued for 3 sets of waterfalls until we came out upon the most magnificent waterfall I have ever seen.

Deciding we had gotten the better of Laos for the day, we decided to leave Luang Prabang the next morning while we were still ahead, however our luck had just run out. . .