It was raining when
we arrived at the bus station in Vientiane. As usual, a crowd of
tuk-tuk drivers formed around us as we left the bus, but we ignored
them and walked over to the central ticket office to see if we could
get on a bus up to Vang Vieng. Nope. Turns out that we were at the
wrong bus terminal – the south terminal and we needed the north
one. All of the tuk-tuk drivers we asked about getting there quote us
stupid prices, so we head out to the main road, where we find a guy
who we can haggle down to something more reasonable. The annoying
thing here in Laos is that the tuk-tuk drivers charge per person, so
with four of us, what might seem like a reasonable price for a ride
quickly gets ridiculous. Tuk-tuks are different here, too – more
like small flat-bed trucks with bench seats in the back.
When we got into
downtown Vientiane, the driver stopped and suggested that we get out
and catch the VIP bus that would be leaving from there soon. Against
our better judgement we did and were soon joined by a young British
girl and a Brazilian guy. We all bought our tickets for the bus,
which, we were told, would be arriving in 15 minutes and leaving at
10am – about an hour away. Not long after, the ticket seller came
over to me and asked if we wanted to get a minivan to Vang Vieng
instead, for another 20,000 kip. He then told me that we actually
didn't really have a choice, as the bus was already full and there
wasn't any room on it for us. I told the others and we all ganged up
on him, telling him in no uncertain term that we were getting on that
bus and asking why it was that everyone in Laos seemed to want to rip
us off. He retreated quickly and mostly left us alone after that. The
bus did arrive about 15 minutes later, but it didn't leave at 10am.
While we were waiting around for it to go, we met the two Dutch girls
we had chatted to on Don Det. They had come straight up to Vientiane
but had both got sick, so had mostly been hanging around their
hostel.
People started to
arrive and climb aboard the bus and at 11am, we finally got under
way. Some time after we got out of Vientiane, the bus stopped as we
hit a queue of banked-up traffic. As we crawled forward, the cause of
the delay became clear – a nearby river had broken its banks and
water was flooding over the road. Ever resourceful, numerous local
women were sitting on little chairs and using nets to catch the
little fish that had been caught up in the flood.
We arrived in Vang
Vieng at about 3pm and after we had grabbed our bags from the bus and
started thinking about how we were going to get into town, we noticed
that there was a minivan with a 'Free shuttle' sign in the window.
Result! We hadn't booked anywhere to stay, so after we had been
dropped off, Kate and Sarah went off to look for a room, while Zoe
and I stayed with the bags. When I went to move them into the shade,
I realised that we were two bags short. We've been carrying a couple
of little shoulder-bags around with our 'extras' in – food and
water, empty plastic bags, that sort of thing - and apparently we had
left two of them on the minibus. While we wouldn't really miss most
of the stuff, one of them had all of our charging cords, which we
definitely would miss. I wasn't sure if Kate had taken the bags with
her, so I had to wait until they returned to do something about
trying to track them down.
When they got back,
they didn't have the bag, but they had found somewhere to stay. I
quickly ran around and found out who put on the free bus and
established that they had found the bags and then waited as they
drove them back to me. Service! We then walked to the hotel, checked
in, dumped our bags and headed out into town. And took an instant
dislike to it. Vang Vieng has what could best be described as a very
chequered past. It went from obscure bus stop to thriving party town
in a very short time. It attracted a certain sort of backpacker,
offering cheap beer, easy access to a wide variety of illegal
intoxicants and various 'thrill' activities, from tubing and kayaking
in the river that runs past the town to rock climbing and mountain
biking. Of course, when you mix swiftly moving water with intoxicants
and youthful bravado, tragedy is never far away, and apparently the
Australian government eventually became so concerned at the number of
its young citizens who were losing there lives in Vang Vieng that a
couple of years ago it alerted the Lao government to the situation.
One visit from a government minister later and half the bars in towns
had been shut down and the mere whiff of a spliff was enough to draw
cops from miles around. So things are a lot quieter now, but this is
still an artificial town – it exists only to serve tourists. And
it's a perfect illustration of what rapid unregulated Asian tourism
development looks like – and it ain't pretty. And it's made all the
more depressing because the town is set in such a beautiful area. Big
dramatic karst hills rise from the river, giving it an impressive
backdrop that's visible wherever you are in the town.
After walking around
for a while we gravitated to the river, where a series of restaurants
line the bank opposite the karst hills – jutting out from the bank
so you're raised up above the river. We managed to find one with a
table free at the end with an uninterrupted view of the hills. To get
to the table, we had to pass through one of the other notable Vang
Vieng amenities – a big lounge area where TVs were playing old
episodes of Friends. It's not just this restaurant – just in
that strip there were at least four venues with TV screens showing
the amusing exploits of those lovable young New Yorkers – and
several more elsewhere in town.
We ordered some
beers and chips and watched the sun go down, before deciding we
couldn't be bothered to hunt around for somewhere to have dinner and
ordered a red curry, some pad thai and some pork and green beans
beans. As we were walking past an Irish bar on the way back to the
hotel, I spotted the British couple we had met on Don Det - Josh and
his girlfriend (I'm not sure she ever told me her name) - and joined
them for a chat as the others went back to the room. They mentioned
another Vang Vieng characteristic that had been nagging at us as we
walked around the town – it's full of South Koreans. For some
reason, young (and some old) South Koreans flock to the town to let
their hair down and quite a few of the shops had signs written
Korean.
I think that today
is when we officially became travel weary. We've covered a lot of
ground in the past few days and the trouble at the border, the
relentless attempts to rip us off, the general listlessness of many
of the locals, and, I think, the comedown from being pampered on Song
Saa have all conspired to suck a bit of the energy and enthusiasm out
of us. I reckon if someone offered to pick us up and fly us all to
Sydney right now they wouldn't have too much trouble convincing us.
But tomorrow's another day...
No comments:
Post a Comment