Today was the girls'
birthday, so we let them sleep in before we headed out to get some
breakfast. One of the difficulties of travelling around Southeast
Asia is the constant significant price fluctuations that occur when
you move from country to country and even town to town. So you often
baulk at paying next to nothing for something just because it's twice
what you paid for it in the last place. And so, this morning, we
found ourselves traipsing around the various cafes and restaurants
trying to find somewhere that did cheaper pancakes than anywhere
else. Sadly, when we finally settled on one, its cheap pancakes were
awful pancakes – but they did do good mango shakes (and the girls
were entranced by the cartoons on their TV). Zoe was so insulted by
the quality of the food that she went back out to the street and
bought a Nutella pancake from one of the street vendors that are a
real feature of Vang Vieng (more on them later). In contrast to our
expensive restaurant breakfast, it was delicious and it didn't last
long.
After breakfast we
walked across the bridge to the little island in the river across
from the town. As we wandered around, a group of young German guys
walked past carrying tyre inner tubes. As I mentioned in yesterday's
post, tubing down the river is one of the popular things to do in
Vang Vieng but with all of the rain that has fallen in the area
lately, the river has been too high and hence too dangerous for
tubing – but now it was apparently okay again. We asked the Germans
how it was and although they didn't rave about it, they were positive
enough to plant the seed in our minds, and on our way back to the
hotel we asked about prices at the central tubing booking area. We
tried to ascertain whether we could just take two tubes and pay half
price, but the language barrier meant it took some time to get a
straight(ish) answer. But it seemed as thought that would be
possible, so we popped back to the room to change, walked back, paid
the money, grabbed our tubes and hopped in the back of a tuk-tuk with
another group of strapping young German lads – and were then driven
up the road to our designated drop-off point. The German guys were
first in the water and they all made loud noises about how frigid it
was, but when we got in, we found it quite pleasant. Zoe and I
climbed onto one tube and Kate and Sarah got on the other. They took
a bit longer to get comfortable, so Zoe and I were first out into the
current, and we were soon speeding away from the others. We quickly
came across a bunch of guys on the bank querying us about something.
I didn't know what it was but figured the answer was no and floated
past them. As we approached another group, I saw them throw ropes out
to the German guys and realised that they were from the bars,
literally roping in their customers - and then I kicked myself for
not bringing any extra money.
Soon after, we hit a
section of faster, more turbulent water where the river changed
direction, whooping as we bobbed up and down in the waves. A short
time later, Kate and Sarah hit the same patch of rough water. Their
tube got turned around so that they were floating down the river
backwards. As they laughed and giggled about their predicament, they
didn't realise that the current was taking them closer and closer to
the riverbank – so close in fact, that their tube crashed into the
vegetation growing from it. The tube bounced off, but Sarah didn't,
as her lifejacket got caught on a piece of bamboo and she was left
hanging as Kate floated away. She called out and Kate jumped off and
into the water and started kicking as hard as she could in order to
stay as close as she could to Sarah, all the while calling out for
her to jump in – she thought that Sarah was too scared to jump into
the river, when in fact she was just stuck on the bamboo. Thankfully,
she quickly managed to detach herself, swim down in the current to
Kate and drag herself back onto the tube – and the two of them
continued their journey downriver, slightly shaken and in Sarah's
case slightly scratched up, but otherwise okay. Excitement over, we
all settled back to enjoy the spectacular karst scenery we were
floating past and the little patches of turbulent water we were
floating through. And then all too soon (about 45 minutes after we
set out) it was all over and we paddled to the edge of the river
where a big sign indicated that our tubing adventure was over.
We dropped off the
tubes and walked back to the room, and then while Kate went into town
to buy us some tickets for the bus to Luang Prabang, I cleaned the
Kiet Ngong mud off our shoes out the front of the hotel. Then, later
in the afternoon we went out to another of the riverside restaurants
for some beer and chips and cards. On the way, however, we stopped
off for some lime and sugar 'pancakes'. One of Vang Vieng's few
positives can be found on one of the street corners near the river,
where a group of women have set up stalls selling what they call
pancakes. They're made out of a very elastic dough, which they
repeatedly slap down on the stall's metal counter until it forms a
thin sheet, which is then spread out over a slightly concave
hotplate, folded inwards and then flipped over. They're crunchy and
oily and super delicious – and super cheap.
Later in the evening
we did a bit of a restaurant crawl, starting with some noodle soup
with barbecued pork at a funny place across the road from the hotel,
followed by a big plate of barbecued pork in another place across
town and then some pancakes on the way back to the hotel.
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