Vang Vieng

Next I took a bus north to Vang Vieng, which a few years ago was a sleepy river village. Now it's backpacker central, with tons of drunken 20-something kids floating on innertubes between bars on the river. The town has been completely taken over by tourism, with restaurants, thumping techno dance clubs, internet shops and some sketch massage parlors vying for attention.



The area around my bungalow down by the river, though, was beautiful and serene. Surrounded by mountains, rivers and rice paddies, the scenery is still worth going to see. And it seems like every nearby village has discovered a cave in the mountains that they tout as a must-see destination.




I went to see a cave with a Buddha shrine inside of it (complete with a slightly lame "Blue Lagoon" out front), and met intrepid Scottish white-water rafting tour guide Amon there. We ended up taking a motorbike tour through the jungle countryside, getting lost for a couple of hours looking for the road back to town. The minute you get out in the country you can really get a feel for the level of poverty that exists in Laos, hidden from view in the tourist-oriented cities. The countryside was just amazing though. The mountains just shoot straight out of the ground and the scenery alternates between browned-out dry rice paddies and lush jungle.