Vang Vieng: Part One

[I know this is somewhat late but what follows is an account of our time at Vang Vieng in Laos, one of the oddest and, weirdly enough, thought-provoking places we visited in South East Asia, which is funny considering it markets itself in a pretty one-note manner - it's the place you go to get 'fucked up' and that's about it. Hope you find it interesting. It's pretty long so I've had to split it into three parts. I'll be well impressed with anyone who reads the whole thing!]

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Until a couple of years ago, I don’t think I had ever properly heard of Laos, and if I had I probably wouldn’t: (a) be able to tell you where it was or (b) know how to pronounce it. (I’m still not 100% sure of the latter but I think the final ‘s’ is silent…) “Vang Vieng” would have just drawn a blank stare, but in the last year or so I began to hear more and more about this secret party place…

Tubing

The biggest draw of this small town in northern Laos is “tubing”, whereby you rent out a big inflatable ‘tube’ for 50,000kip (approx. $4.50/£3) plus deposit, and basically float 3km down the Nam Song River, as dance music blares out from the numerous bars fringing the riverside, and people in the water lie in wait to, literally, reel you in and ply you with ridiculously cheap and/or free shots and whiskey buckets, while toned, bronzed, Aryan bar staff write all over you with permanent marker pens and force encourage you to join in with a slew of drinking games. It’s, basically, one giant piss up, but on a river, backed by dramatically beautiful limestone karsts, with plenty of zip wires, slides and swings available for people to acrobatically launch themselves into the river in between rounds.

The Dark Side of Vang Vieng

Sounds fun, right? But Vang Vieng is also renowned for two ‘d’ words: drugs and deaths. Many of the bars have special ‘happy’ menus – happy pizzas, happy shakes, you name it. On offer are marijuana, mushrooms, and opium – either to be smoked or otherwise whipped up into beverages or snacks. One menu we saw, which was exclusively of the ‘happy’ kind, was split into these three categories, but at the bottom there was the additional temptation of the “Disco bucket”, consisting of marijuana, opium AND mushrooms, AND whiskey, all mixed together into an unholy, massively unregulated, potential concoction of mindfuckery and death. I can’t even imagine what the effects of this would be. Needless to say, I didn’t try one.

Perhaps within the confines of a bar, you’re ok as far as the law goes, but the repercussions of getting caught with drugs on your person are severe. If one of the many, stealthy, plainclothes policemen catches you with a joint, it could cost you US$500 or three months in jail; either way, your passport will be taken from you until you cough up the fine or agree to be locked up. I don’t know much about Lao jails but I hardly imagine they’re pleasant places to spend any amount of time in, let alone three whole months! We read that one woman was recently jailed for life in Vientiane for carrying heroin; she was originally sentenced to death, but managed to escape a grisly end by somehow getting herself impregnated in jail. Apparently, under Lao law, a pregnant woman cannot be given the death sentence. Good thinking there, lady.

So if the threat of a giant fine, prison or death isn’t worrying enough, there have been several deaths along the river too. Exact numbers are unclear, but this year alone, two young Australian men, aged 19 and 26, have died; one was reported to have drowned while the other succumbed to injuries after a bad fall from a zip wire. Sadly, it’s really not hard to imagine the probabilities of something going wrong here. Factor in the following: hordes of people off their heads on alcohol or weed or both; a fast-flowing river, with unseen, sharp jaggedy rocks lurking beneath the surface; people potentially passing out and falling out of their tubes; people flinging themselves off ledges, wires and swings from a great height and crashing into the water below; and inadequate healthcare provision, with the nearest recommended hospital over the border in Thailand. Doesn’t it sound like a cocktail of complete mental and physical destruction?

First Impressions

This is the knowledge Tom and I were armed with upon entering Vang Vieng. As you can probably imagine, we were a little apprehensive, but I have friends who have not only survived VV but had an awesome time, so I didn’t want to indulge in too much scaremongering. Plus I had no intention of tubing on the river anyway – I’m hardly water’s biggest fan, and I’d heard you could just as easily get the best out of it by hitting up the bars on foot and watching the crazy foreigners on the river from a safe distance.

I don’t know exactly what it was that I was expecting to find on arriving into Vang Vieng, but it turned out to be quite different to what I had imagined. The road into town from the bus station was rickety, red, hot and dusty, and since the sun happened to be setting at that time, the overall impression was that of a Western. I half expected to see a cowboy emerging from a saloon, kicking up the dust with every footfall of his shiny, leather, stud-clad boots.

Once we arrived into the town itself, the first thing I noticed was its size. It’s a very small place. The second thing I noticed was how quiet it was. I was perplexed. Where were all the drunk Westerners? Where were the bars? Where was the party? To be honest, I was a little relieved, as I was wary that we were stumbling into a Tenerife, or a Magalouf, or one of those other places I’ve never been to but already despise, and imagine is full of red-faced English people being loud, and stumbly, and shouty, and vomity, and generally an embarrassment and discredit to their nation.

Wherever the drunken excesses were happening, it didn’t seem to be here. I reflected that perhaps everyone was still tubing. We were dropped off at our hotel – I had decided to ‘splurge’ for a night and had picked the number 1 rated hotel on Trip Advisor, a place called “Ban Sabai Bungalows”, located about a 5-10 minute walk from the town centre and on the riverside. It was beautiful. This was the view from our bungalow balcony:

And this was the view from the riverside restaurant:

We were promptly served our free welcome cocktail and then ordered a jug of “Lao-gria” to toast our safe arrival and watch the sun set over the Nam Song river.

I was SO happy. Vang Vieng was meant to be this hedonistic, pulsating rave fest – and I was definitely up for a bit of that, in my own time – but here we were, sipping on our cocktails and drinking in the sight of the quiet, still river with the achingly beautiful, rippling reflections of the limestone karsts, which were steadily changing colour as the blazing sun dipped below the horizon.

“IN your FACE, Halong Bay!” I exclaimed, punching the air with a tightly closed fist. This, to me, was what Halong Bay ought to have been. This!

A picture of a thousand words

Not this:

A picture of one word: Monochrome.

And so, for this alone – this atonement, or reparation, or whatever you want to call it – Vang Vieng quickly stole my heart.

I began to think that perhaps staying in Ban Sabai was an excellent idea, because this way, we were just far enough out of town to relax and enjoy some peace and quiet and benefit from the beautiful, unspoilt views, but still close enough that we could dip in and out of the party scene as much as we wanted/dared…

Western excess – the beginning

Our first taste of Western excess, and of just what a strange place Vang Vieng is, was venturing back into town for dinner. Almost all of the bars and restaurants, serving copycat menus of Western comfort food and basic Thai approximation style dishes, also had cushioned, wooden platform seating areas clustered around a flat screen TV, showing endless reruns of US comedies. Some were showing Family Guy, others were showing South Park, and most were showing Friends – all 10 series on DVD, all afternoon and all evening.

“Sweet,” said Tom, approvingly. We sat down in Banana restaurant and ended up watching about 4 or 5 episodes of early season Friends.

Now, I’m not going to lie. It was pretty fun. I’m not one of those Friends snobs – you know the ones – the ones who only ever watched Seinfield and think that Friends is nothing but lowest-common denominator, populist entertainment for those who lack a more sophisticated sense of humour. Whatever. Funny is funny at the end of the day, and though I concede that the series suffered a decline in quality with later seasons, it IS funny, and it still makes me laugh. And ever since E4 pulled the plug on their ubiquitous reruns, there’s been a bit of a Friends-shaped hole in my life that I never even realised was there, until this moment.

Still, as I tucked in to my chicken schnitzel filled with ham and cheese (ultimate comfort oven food), and speared my chips, and shovelled them into my appreciative gob, I couldn’t help but feel a little…uneasy. I looked around at the other slack-jawed, glassy-eyed Westerners, some who were presumably nursing their hangover and others who were quite possibly still drunk; all of us, beached on a sea of cushions, and ensconced in this mindless safe zone of Western…ness. And yet here we were, in what was once a small, traditional fishing village, in Laos. What was this place? I felt all that was missing was a troupe of young boys fanning us with giant banana leaves whilst feeding us grapes and topping up our milk bath.

Once again I was reminded of Wall-E, where in the future, humans have been reduced to oversized, impotent babies in chairs:

The last time I had this flash of a dystopic, sedentary future was in a spa in Shenzhen, where row upon row of people sat in leather armchairs, eyes fixed on the detachable TV screen in front of them as one person massaged their feet, another massaged their head and shoulders, and another brought them food and drinks on request, whilst patrons further down pulled their blankets over their heads and tucked themselves in for the night. It was like being on a giant plane in business class, except you weren’t really going anywhere. It ranks quite highly on my list of odd experiences. Well. This list was definitely about to increase.

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Next up in Part Two: Vang Vieng by night - lethal buckets, a piece of hot ass (literally), and a smidgen of prostitution