The minivan we took to the waterfall was fine for a half-hour ride with no luggage, but the same vehicle was more problematic for a six-hour ride along a winding mountain road to Vang Vieng. Katherine was mostly annoyed that the air conditioning didn't work, despite repeated assurances to the contrary when we were booking the ticket. Perhaps the heat was compounded for her by the several backpacks -- and the various bags of vegetables purchased by our driver en route -- that she was forced to balance on her knees. I was mostly annoyed by the fact that I was seated in the middle of the front seat, awkwardly trying to avoid being punched in the leg every time we shifted gears, which on this road was approximately every ten seconds. On the plus side, the scenery was gorgeous, and I had a fantastic sandwich when we stopped for lunch.
Vang Vieng itself is famous for its "tubing," in which tourists ride inner tubes down the Nam Song river, occasionally stopping to drink more beer or, exhibiting the bravado that comes only with the aforementioned beverage, to swing on ropes into what appeared to us to be a rather treacherous river. Since neither Katherine nor I is a 19-year-old fraternity boy, we opted to spend our day in Vang Vieng on a "trek" with Green Discovery, which began with a brief kayak trip along the Nam Song and then continued with a walk along these terraced rice fields.
The paths through the rice fields, and the "trail" that we took from there to the edge of the valley, proved to be somewhat muddy. Katherine has since discarded these socks, and the shoes are secreted in a plastic bag somewhere in the depths of her backpack. I wore my Tevas, which had the advantage that I could keep them on for our long kayak ride later in the afternoon, and they ended up being mostly clean after my two dips on the river (one voluntary, one not so much).
We spent some time exploring a few different caves, although Katherine remained in the antechamber of this one and skipped the second one entirely, due to a lack of appropriate footwear. However, the last cave we visited was the most fun, because it was full of water and we swam into it. There was quite a strong current sweeping us outward, which on balance is probably the safer direction. Apparently in the low-water season, there are some caves that you can kayak straight through, under the mountains.
By far the strangest feature of Vang Vieng is the fact that in almost every restaurant, the tables are set up essentially with couches on one side, facing a television that is showing non-stop episodes of Friends. I enjoy Joey's antics as much as the next guy, but it still seemed a little bizarre. By the second night, though, we had summoned the cultural sensitivity necessary to embrace this local custom and chose our restaurant on the basis of which episode we wanted to watch.Our last night in Laos was spent back at the Sene Souk Guesthouse in Luang Prabang, which is my favorite place that we've stayed on this trip. I found a new reason to love them when a man arrived on our plane minutes before takeoff the following morning to return my credit card, which I'd forgotten I'd left with the clerk at the hotel (so that he had some confidence that we'd return and pay our bill after our trip to Vang Vieng). The hotel clerk must have realized I'd forgotten it soon after we left, and sent someone by taxi to the airport just to return it to me!
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