Vang Vieng

Day 13 and we land in Vang Vieng

Note to self…Saturday night is not a good night to be in this very tourist oriented town! We write this as we listen…grimacing…to the very loud and increasingly tuneless karaoke happening adjacent our accommodation. Might be a late one!

A very wet night last night and the rain didn’t stop in the morning so we eventually set off in the rain- not too unpleasant actually! A fairly short and easy ride to Vang Vieng…but finding the guesthouse we’d booked proved a tad more difficult! It was nowhere to be found where the map said it ought to be, and after sussing out every possible track in the vicinity I’d given up, but Neil persevered, asking local after local until we finally found it about 4 km away from where it was listed! But in a good spot…except for the karaoke going on next door.

A little ride out to the “Blue Lagoon” near the township in the afternoon, and a lovely cold swim. The sheer number of people was off putting but most of them weren’t in the water so it was actually pretty nice 🙂

The backdrop to Vang Vieng is simply stunning, and with the easy access to the water it’s easy to see why it became a Mecca for tourists. The Laos govt has now removed the waterfront bars etc and cleaned up the behaviour of Western tourists ( a few too many deaths by the seems…). Still a few ugly Australians strutting around though… you can hear them a mile away…

The town did seem to be struggling, large numbers of guest houses and restaurants are closed and up for sale or rent. Could be the effect from Covid, or the attempt to transition from a backpacker low spend tourism to a more high spend upmarket model.

We’ve had a few days with barely any internet so only able to upload this now… to be followed some time later with updates from our last few days 🙂