337: VANG VIENG

We had a winding and bumpy 8 hour drive through the mountains to Vang Vieng. The scenery in that part of the country is gorgeous, but the town itself was a bit of a hole. It was full of drunken and/or stoned tourists who were there to do the infamous tubing down the river. The tubing is actually quite dangerous because of all the bars along the river, and having intoxicated people in the river leads to a lot of injuries and even deaths. When we arrived, my tour guide warned us of all the drinking, drugs, deaths, and rapes that occur here, and the impression of the town that I got from him did not get better as I walked around and saw that it was full of tourists and that there were barely any Laotians.

My tour guide said, "At night time you will see a funny thing. You will see lots of naked people coming back from tubing!" And sure enough, there were tons of scantily dressed foreigners - some covered in mud, some with no shoes, some with writing on their bodies, all of them wasted - coming back from the river. It made for some good people watching during dinner!

This town is a bit different from all the others I had been to, where conventional clothing (covered shoulders and knees) is recommended. There are way too many swimsuit-clad tourists here for the locals to really care. In fact, Vang Vieng had a bit of a surreal quality to it. Instead of the constant smiles and 'sabai dees' I had become accustomed to, all I got in Vang Vieng were blank stares from the locals and an invitation to join a circle of happy, stoned people. Everything was catered to Westerners - all the restaurants were full of tv's showing old episodes of Friends and Family Guy.

I felt that despite the beauty surrounding Vang Vieng, it was missing something that the other parts of Laos had - it seemed too hedonistic, as if it had lost its soul.