We got on another minibus from Luang Prabang and in about 5 hours, we got to Vang Vieng, a city known for its party tourism almost as much as it’s known for the outdoor activities. The town itself is visibly centered around tourism and visitors, mainly westerners and Koreans. Every second shop sells waterproof bags and phone cases, swim suits, hats and things like that. And the others are either a restaurant/bar or a liquor store. The weird thing is being here when it’s almost completely empty. Its like post apocalyptic. Good for us though, because we felt like we had the swimming holes and rivers and caves all to ourselves.
Where there is normally floods of people, lines to get in and nowhere to sit, we had silence and exclusivity. It was so great!
Of the many many caves here to explore, we only visited a few. We don’t have headlamps and didn’t want to buy them. Our phone lights are not enough for the darkness inside these caves. I’m not a huge fan of small confined spaces, especially when it’s cold and damp and so quiet you can hear your heart beat. Sounds like torture no thanks.
But at the entrance of some of the caves, there is also a lovely little swimming spot with cool fresh spring water and little fish. We parked our scooter and walked to the first one through empty dried up rice fields and a banana tree farm, crossing a little brook with bamboo stalks as a bridge. Its a small swimming hole and I only popped in for a minute. There was not one single other tourist there. Only once we were leaving was there another couple just getting there.
Then we ventured on to try and find blue lagoon 3, of which there are apparently 6. On our drive, we passed lots of cows, goats, dogs, chickens and THEN we turned a corner and saw an ELEPHANT! Can you believe that?! We couldn’t. I love elephants so much!!! And he looked right at me. I think I’ve never been this close to an elephant before!
Laos used to be known as the land of a million elephants but because of cruelty and capture, their numbers have dwindled. But instead of making them work in logging, some have been kind of “rescued” and they give people rides around for money. The people riding him must have been locals, because they were speaking Laos with the other people. The elephants we saw here looked ok. No poke marks or chains. And they are mostly free to roam around their area next to the water. They can’t survive in the wild, so I guess this is as good as it might get for them. Later, we even saw the guy taking one for a walk, no ropes, no rides. Just taking his elephant for a walk.
So after that excitement, we drove some more until we made it to blue lagoon 3. What a sight! Can you believe this exists?!?!
And for the first hour or so, we were mostly alone. Around 1pm more people started to show up, but never a line to swing or jump, as we heard would be the case. Excellent! Look at that blue!!
So, like I said before, this area is known for its outdoor activities like zip lining and buggy car driving and the swimming holes and the tubing. Where I’m from in Florida, we also have rivers you float down on a tube. This was not quite the same.
The water was mostly clear and moved quite slowly. There are mountains all around. The river was wide and at some points, a local riverside bar owner is trying to entice you to pull over and have a drink. Quite desperately I might add…
We made a stop at one floating bar/restaurant for lunch and a beer. And then plopped back in the tubes for the last half.
Some of the river had some pretty intense rapids and we got a little stuck a few times on the rocks. That was mostly funny and only a little scary.
Another one of the blue lagoons we heard was really nice, we also heard about how crowded it normally is, especially with Korean tourists. (Apparently a Korean tv star shot a scene jumping from the tree into the water here so the tourists flock to see where it happened and recreate). This lagoon was alot more relaxed and looked to be less of a party spot. Again, it was almost eerily empty and the water was clear and cool. You can see the local boys playing around on the rope swing in the second picture below. š
So that’s it for Vang Vieng.
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