28th November - 7th December 2011
We spent a good nine days in this beautiful party spot on the river, Nam Song most of them doing sweet F.A. Vang Vieng was virtually unknown until tubing, introduced by a farm owner as a refreshing, end-of-season reward for his workers, took off, now if you do any research at all into the small town all you will find are references to the hedonism of young (and usually British) students, floating down the Nam Song in an inflated inner tube and the rather widespread drug and alcohol culture – instigated by said student tourists. Less touted is the fact that all this partying takes place in the most stunning location, limestone karsts rising out of rice paddies in my opinion give Halong Bay a run for it's money especially since it's in Laos where people smile a whole lot more. We were in two minds about what to do with our limited time in Northern Laos but the slow moving and completely relaxed atmosphere was too appealing and we were too lazy to do any real tourism with our week and a bit in Laos before heading back to Thailand.
The first full day was fairly productive considering we were woken up in the early hours of the morning by loud drunken revellers crossing the bridge right outside our room. The river is spanned by many rickety bridges connecting the main street and the bulk of the hotels with the little party places that keep going until two or three in the morning. If I'd had any sort of weapon other than my foul mood, at being woken up by silly kids assuring their friends that the bridge was perfectly safe by jumping up and down on it, the irritating wretches wouldn't have been partying the following night at all. Djalma made good use of his morning by climbing, having paid for the day he came back when the morning session was finished not having the energy to carry on, on the way back he bumped into Kat and Charlie (the English couple we met in Halong Bay were they went climbing together). Meanwhile, I got busy writing about Ninh Binh, the last place I really loved in Vietnam and finished working on some of our photos. We chilled out the rest of the afternoon and then went to meet Kat and Charlie in a bar over a bridge somewhere. We sat next to a group of kids, probably on their year out, and listened to conversations that I haven't heard since leaving England, and haven't missed at all. Djalma had a beer and watched the football while I sat and felt incredibly old and disapproving. Nearer to 10pm someone brought out a gas-lit bar and people who were suitably drunk to even consider doing the limbo under the flames lined up prove their lack of flexibility and common sense. We didn't find Kat or Charlie but apparently they were there too and saw more than a few people burn tender flesh as they came into contact with the flaming bar. Bloody idiots.
The next morning, despite our best efforts, we didn't make it to the tubing drop off point until midday, utterly starving we stopped off at the Organic Farm and shared a delicious chicken satay with black and white rice. We walked over the bridge to the first of many bars lined up along the river and got our first whiskey bucket. Despite the pounding speakers there were few people and we stood and watched them as they slowly arrived by the tuk-tuk-full – you could tell the people who'd been before because they came only for the drinking and partying unencumbered by the tube. We slowly worked our way down through the bars, a bucket here, a bucket there, some places even gave out free joints (for those who were interested).
Djalma swung on all the swings and zip wires, keeping cool in the afternoon heat, our afternoon drifted by rather quickly and soon enough we were left without much time to get ourselves back into town. On the way up to the drop-off point we were told by a young English boy that we should be careful because the drinks were deceptively strong and to take care with any happy or mushy shakes that we might have, I didn't say anything but I did feel that we were MORE than old enough to know when we'd had enough and to take care of ourselves. Ha. The alcohol wasn't the problem, the Redbull that they put in the whisky and coke buckets was. Illegal in the UK, the USA and goodness knows where else, everyone chugs the potent mix down in Thailand and Laos (even drinks marketed at young children proudly advertise the fact that they contain added taurine) if you're feeling tired all you need is one, we had several mixed in with our drinks and it totally messed with my head. Nearing six o'clock we launched ourselves into our tubes and paddled ourselves downstream taking care to keep our bottoms high up to avoid some of the rather high rocks – Djalma forgot and scratched his bottom on the way down – he didn't forget after that. Laughing and giggling all the way back to town we arrived to discover that we'd made it in very good time, in fact we were twenty minutes early – after a certain time they charge you a lot more for keeping the tube. We took our cold, wet selves back to our room, had a quick shower and then went straight back out for a big burger dinner.
Over the next five days, we hung out, watched films and slept. We also made a pact to get, or do our best to get, a six pack for Christmas, to this end we started following a work-out video by Jillian Michaels. It's horribly American and I'm more than embarrassed admitting that I now do workout videos, but as Jillian herself says 'it's effective' and 'will get you in the sickest shape of your life' (having now done more than two weeks I'm inclined to agree with sadistic woman). We have been doing this video five to six days out of seven with one rest day and man does it make you sweat.
After a working week of utter lethargy, aside from our morning work-outs, we decided to hire some bicycles and cycle out to the Blue Lagoon. The road was terrible, it wasn't a road, it was a track designed by nature to give you the sorest bottom and the numbest hands possible. Pothole galore. There were plenty of signs that trumpeted a particular area to be “The Blue Lagoon” and after visiting one of them we wised up and followed the proper directions, eventually arriving at the real deal. The road along the way cut through some rice paddies, which even though brown and dry, were still beautiful.
We swam in the lagoon which was really just a wide bend in a river with some mineral that made the water a powdery blue, and had some fried rice from a food stall near the water. After lunch Djalma amused himself by practising back flips off a swing and into the water while I took myself up some rather steep steps to a cave set deep into a karst.
The cave was incredible, I didn't see much of it because I neglected to take a torch but what I did see was beautiful. It was huge and light poured in from some natural windows illuminating some of the cave walls and the ceiling dripping with stalactites. After a few minutes I started making my way back down and at his Lordships request took some photos of his back flips.
We rode back after Djalma finished his “just one more” flips the evening rides on hot air balloons coinciding with a rather beautiful sunset.
The following morning we organised our route into Thailand, and in the afternoon we revisited the river this time minus the rather expensive tubes. Not really heeding the Redbull content (much to my later regret) we shared three whisky and coke buckets and danced with the kids. Djalma of course was swinging around like the monkey he is while I stayed dry, took pictures and got tipsy. After a certain point I can't remember what we did and have only vague recollections of the rest of our night.
The next morning was brutal, l had the most hideous hangover of all time (aside from my first ever hangover when I was ill for three days and could only stand up properly on the fourth). Djalma gave me lots of sympathy, put me in the shower and helped me wash, I didn't even condition my hair that's how rough I was feeling! Shivering and shaking in bed we left it till the last minute to leave for the minibus, I managed part of an egg sandwich which I then struggled to keep down once we started moving. The minibus delivered us to a bigger bus which was to take us to Vientiane, I took an anti-sickness pill, tried to control my breathing and heart rate (the latter of which was scarily erratic and convinced me that our drink was spiked by drugs only effective on gingers) and listened to the Rat Pack, Michael Buble and Mariah Carey sing about Christmassy stuff, surprisingly the Christmas music was the most effective thing to calm me down and convince my body that it really didn't want to throw up my breakfast. After several torturous hours we arrived in Vientiane, the capital, and got into a smaller minibus with other people going to Chiang Mai in Thailand. I was feeling a little better by this point and by the time we crossed the border (I think near Vientiane) I was ready for a big baguette, a tube of Pringles, an ice-cream and some lime fizzy pop. We handed over our passports to our friendly driver who took care of everything and stuffed ourselves silly, doing our best to spend the last of our kip before we arrived in Thailand. Several hours later we pulled up in a big bus park, got out and waited for our overnight sleeper bus to Chiang Mai. Having not taken care of border issues ourselves, it didn't really like we'd arrived in Thailand. While we waited for our bus to be ready we sat and chatted to another English couple, Katie and Ray, who were going the same way as us. It's worth a mention that Djalma was also feeling very rough but I was so self absorbed and worrying about puking everywhere that I honestly didn't notice his own suffering. By the evening we were fine and even managed a sort of sleep once we did get on the bus. We pulled up in the centre of Chiang Mai at around 6am and set off with Katie and Ray to find a cheap hotel in the old quarter. After a little wandering around we were stopped by a couple of friendly tuk-tuk drivers who took us to Chiang Mai Inn (if you like a good nights sleep do NOT go there) where we got a nice little room for two hundred baht.
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