อ่านทริป วังเวียง ภาษาไทยคลิกที่นี่ค่ะ
***Continued from Vientiane***
Today, I headed to Vang Vieng by public van.
First, I’ve never been there and I had no idea about Vang Vieng at all– only the map telling me that this town is between Luang Prabang and Vientiane.
Vang Vieng is a backpacker-oriented town, with the main street featuring guest houses, bars, restaurants, internet cafes, tour agencies and western tourists… That’s what the tour book said….
We got ticket for the van for the trip at 310 baht or $11 USD in Vientiane! The van will leave Vientiane at 1pm. So I got ready to wait for the van in front of my hotel about 12.30pm, but guess what?
The van came to pick up us at 1.20pm and it was empty! (that means we were the first one in the van and need to pick up the others!).
So, we got all the passengers and left Vientiane at 2pm , maybe it was Laos’s time.?.? All the passengers are teenagers (except us!), they are from different countries (Australia, France, Germany, US, etc…).
It takes about 3 hours from Vientiane to Vang Vieng (and about 6-8 hours from Luang Prabang to Vang Vieng), but don’t worry the driver (who said nothing since I got in the van) will stop at the halfway point for a break and bathroom. The bathroom or toilet charged about 2,000 Kip or 8 Baht or $0.25 – you need to have some small money …
I can’t explain how I felt in the van for 3 hours of driving – just kind of hoping that we making it there alive!
Finally, we all arrived in Vang Vieng, the van stopped at somebody’s guest house. There were some guys there that offered rooms at the guest house but we booked a room online, just needed the van driver taking us to our resort.
The driver scared me a little bit since I never heard any words from his mouth! But when I asked him to drop us at our resort – he said “No problem and No charge”!
It was nice of him so we tipped him 60 baht or $2… Our resort is not that far from where he dropped off the others, we just didn’t know where to go!
Riverside Boutique Resort, our choice in Vang Vieng the one that we picked from Agoda (again). It was a nice new hotel and we had a huge room overlooking the river on one side and pool on the other. The view of the Song river and the mountains in the background was breathtaking…
I found out that this resort is brand new and just opened in the last few months ! The only one thing, I don’t like for my room is, the bathtub is very high and it’s very hard to get in and out of!.
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For breakfast, it’s kind of funny that they told me that the breakfast will start at 6.30am, but I came in about 7.30am, and the breakfast was not ready yet! Food provided was just right for the amount of rooms, not a great selection. But the coffee is REALLY REALLY GOOD!
It’s drizzling rain since we arrived because it’s the rainy season. I just hoped that it would not rain tomorrow because I planned for a full day trip! The tour package is very easy to get over here, you don’t need to book any tour online (therefore, I don’t think they have online service – remember this is a backpackers town, everything’s kind of cheap and easy!)
This is one of tour operation in front of our resort. They have so many tour packages which are available every day!
But I will have only one full day in Vang vieng tomorrow, so I bought the full day package for “Trek/Village/4Caves/Kayak”, all day at 400 baht or $12 each!
Interesting tour price…
The tour truck will pick up us at 9 in the morning, tomorrow…
Now it’s time to explore the town where I thought they had a local night market.
But the market (that opens at every night between 4pm – 9pm), are selling all most of the same the same items (Beach towels, beach shorts, cover-ups, sun glasses, slippers, water prove bags…).
I did need the slippers, at 80 baht or ~$3 for tomorrows trip.
For me, the night market or Vang Vieng downtown looks like Khao Sarn Road (Bangkok, Thailand). Where there are also a lot of foreigner backpackers! But Vang Vieng is kind of country side while Khao Sarn Road is kind of city…
The first night was kind of boring because of the rain, so not many people out!
Get ready for Adventure trip!
I was so worried about getting wet, so I packed dry clothes to change into, drinking water, towels, 2 cameras, money, and all together it was too much!!! I learned that I should pack LIGHT for this kind of tour, because I can’t take it all with me on the kayak, and I had to leave some with the driver !!!
While we were waiting for our tour truck to pick up us up we walked around our resort to check out the wooden bridge. This bridge is NOT free, if you would like to cross over you have to pay. It’s just like the express bridge for local people. It’s about 20 baht or &0.75 each for round trip (walking), 30 baht for motorcycle and for car is about 80 baht.
Looking down into the Song River from the bridge helps you to see how strong the current is! Kind of scary thinking what would you do if you fell in there ….
The other side of river looks very beautiful, I don’t have time to check out. The sign to the cave seems very interesting, but it’s kind of far to walk, maybe keep in mind for the next visit!
That’s the resort we stayed…
The bridge is kind of busy, I think it’s very popular bridge for local people…
But it’s time for our tour. This is the tour truck with kayaks on top, they came to pick us up on time but we were the first tourists, they needed to stop and pick up others on the way.
The truck took us all (about 12 of us!) to the cave which is about 20 Kilometers away from the town. Once the truck stopped, there were 6 tour guides that helped to take the kayaks out of the truck. Some of them distributed life jackets to all of us.
When all of us put the life jackets on, one of the tour guide was teaching us how to do the kayak. Believe it or not, we were set up to do the kayak in the Song river – the river that I was just thinking that it has a very strong current, I would be killed if I fell in that river!!!
The good thing is, they provided a nice water prove bag to put my stuff in, they also helped to check everyone before we got on board…
Remember… cameras can get ruined by water, but I still had one camera with me – just very carefully wrapped inside a plastic bag, and I only took pictures when we landed.
Good thing that I had a good partner! The current blew us through the river – we have to balance ourselves and be calm in the kayak.
It was kind of short padding – the tour guide who kayaked in front, middle and behind us, they were good leaders and lead us to the other side of river where we stopped to see the caves…
The first stop is in front of Elephant Cave, the tour guides gave us 2 bottles of water each. And You have to have some water with you, because it was a hike to the Water cave first.
You will walk through the village (just like you walked into somebody property!) then rice fields, trees, canal and stop at a big hut surrounded with spring water, trees and the mountain.
Behind the big hut, we saw another group of tourist were tubing into the WATER cave – the cave is very low to the water but beautiful indeed. To get in the cave, you will get a flash light on your head, as your hands are needed for holding the rope all the way inside the cave.
It’s about 300 meters tubing in the cave – it’s a dead end cave so the guide will tell you to let go of the rope when you reach the end because you will be flow back out with the current. But you need to hold the rope again at the mouth of the cave because the current will take you over a little waterfall next to the cave. The water is also a good place for a swim – but it’s cold water! 
It’s fun! When we got back in the big hut, the tour guide served us lunch with 2 chicken BBQ and a long bread (French bread) and bananas! I was surprised because I didn’t expect to get a free lunch as we paid only 400 baht ($12) for the trip.
The tour guide let us stay here for a while before taking us back to the Elephant Cave where we parked our kayaks.
The Elephant cave looks like a big room under a rock roof! The tour guide told us that it used be place for wild elephants to live. But once the people moved to live in this area, the wild elephants moved out. The local people brought the Buddha to put in this cave for a worship place for the whole village.
It’s amazed that the ceiling of this cave looks like an elephant stone…
After we visited the Elephant cave (Tham Xang), the big journey begins (while all the tourist has no idea for what we are going to do!!!)
The tour guide shouted that we had to get on kayak again, and we are now padding back to the town – 17 more kilometers!!!!
It was kind of scary…because some parts of the Song river have crazy currents! The tour guide’s kayak will be around all the tourist. Sometimes, we had to do one by one through the water. Sometimes, I saw other kayaks upside down, but the tour guide will help everybody safely back to the kayak.
Good thing, my kayak never flipped in the water…
I can’t believe that all of us padding about 2 hours before our team will let us stop at pit stops along the way…
I think the bar stops are the same owner with our tour today. Actually, there are so many stops along the river, some have loud music and water toys (slides, swing ropes, etc…)
When we were on break, another group was tubing and stopped at the same place. See? They don’t need to paddle at all…
The best seller at this place is BEER LAO, the only beer they sell in Vang Vieng….
Water play… just a rope in a tree and a wooden board, but fun!
We took about an hour break at this stop. After that we started back on the kayak (again). It’s time to go back to town which is about 30 minutes away by kayaking.
It’s not as strong from here… Almost kind of calm, and easy to paddle.
At the end, we arrived (and alive!), all the kayaks are parking at Villa Nam Song Hotel (it looks like a nice hotel as well). The tour is over right here, we said thank you (with a tip) and good bye for our tour guides.
And then we walked about 10 minutes back to the hotel…
It was a good experience for me, first of all, I had no idea about the Song river, but today I got more than 20 kilometers experience along the Song river!
Remember that Safety measures for the tubing have been described as “non existent” and a mixture of this and heavy drinking has seen tourists drown. It was reported that 22 tourists died in the river in 2011. (Ref: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vang_Vieng)
However, most visitors seeking to experience something of the highly evolved Lao culture and stunning natural landscape, would do as well to skip Vang Vieng altogether or to use Vang Vieng as a base to explore the surrounding countryside lifestyle.
Time to go back home (safely!)
At this time, we rent the van from Vang Vieng back to Vientiane Airport at 2,800 baht or $94 with Malany Villa (this price is much better than the van in Vientiane which is about 4000-5000 baht). But we did know that it’s very far away between Vientiane and Vangvieng – so it’s worth to pay 2800 baht for the van!!
But if I can fly from Bangkok to Vang Vieng directly, maybe it’s a good place for vacation just no more adventure!
Somethingjam would vote for Luang Prabang in Laos for a better rounded adventure (better night market).
But who knows…let’s visit Southern Laos later!
Sa – Bai – dee…
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