Vang Vieng – A town that lacks Nothing

Laos is a rollercoaster, my friend remarked to me after ten days of ups and downs. Travelling by lurching bus or minivan along the winding, sloping Route 13 North from Vientiane to Luang Prabang is a visceral evocation of this claim. Rarely does a trip go by without a hunched Lao laying claim to the front passenger seat by virtue of spew-bucket.

But it’s an interesting call given its intended wider context. It contradicts some traveller’s perception of Laos as a slow-paced merry-go-round: a circular ruin of food, massages and Western-reinforced ‘culture’. Or endless afternoons spent drinking Beerlao along the Mekong. To glorify this side of things is easy, natural even, as a foreigner.

The Lao national psyche, best summed up by the phrase ‘bor pen yang’, or ‘no worries’, goes some way to masking the many great inequities of the country, the huge disparity of wealth and education between rural and urban areas being one.

Along Route 13, you glimpse some of this. Roadside communities open up onto the highway then fall by the hillside, the many buildings seemingly unfinished as construction materials litter the ground. Lao young and old crowd your slowed vehicle selling you the pungent allure of dried fish, or a relatively comforting can of Pepsi. You’re tempted to part with your small-note-big-number kip (inflation’s a killer) simply from benevolence. Buying warm feelings ain’t hard in this bizarro game of Monopoly.

About 150km from Vientiane – that’s 4 hours of slow, slow travel – the land flattens for a bit, which means you’ve found Vang Vieng. By all accounts, until Lonely Planet, it was a peaceful riverside village, remarkable mostly for its Middle Earth-like views of sheer mountain drops. But the misty peaks have long been joined by hazy foreigners, clouded from beer, buckets (tubs of dubiously concocted cocktails) and weed. The restaurants and bars contribute to the eerie feel, blasting questionable ‘90s pop music or re-re-re-running episodes of Friends or Family Guy over and over and over again. ‘Hey, this reminds me of that time…’

The big attraction here is tubing down the Nam Song river, which combined with the somewhat lax attitude to chemicals…makes it, well, a hellish experience. I’ve been told there’s plenty of wholesome caving, trekking and climbing fun to be had here, and that the organic farm is worth investigating, though I took the shortcut and just ate a plate of the mulberry pancakes that are its trademark.

Tubing, in itself, should be quite fun. It’s certainly refreshing to take a dip. And cheap alcohol and sneaky marijuana deals: well, what can one say. Let me preface this by saying I’m the world’s most likeable drunk, it’s just a shame others don’t follow my lead. Young backpackers with too much money – in a foreign country! – puffed chests, headbands, spray-painted bodies screaming ‘cock-gobbler’ and/or ‘pussy bandit’.

Witness the British backpackers, mustachio’d chumps, who’ve been waylaid along their travels and now work the throbbing flophouses along the river for free booze, accommodation and I don’t want to know what else. I was given a wristband and told to hit up Q Bar later that night for something called Number Fuck. The premise is simple, #1 chump said: if you like her number and a chick likes yours, “you don’t even have to talk to ’em, hey”.

Well, I like talking, even if it’s my rudimentary, desperate Lao cries of ‘jao pen khon ngam’ or ‘jep jai’. Another thing, you’re likely to arrive back at the tubing headquarters after dark, which falls suddenly, and forced to give up your deposit. This can be a terrifying experience, floating in complete darkness to nowhere. Then there are the tuk-tuk drivers willing and ready to stir any Orientalist prejudices that may lie underneath your inebriated stupor, slyly offering “something?” at an exorbitant price.

Vang Vieng is an abomination. The best thing I can say about it is that I’m glad the community at large benefits from the tubing, if what I was told about it being some sort of collective set-up is true. Back to Laos as a rollercoaster; well, yes, it can be emotional. Frustrating. Highly rewarding. At times it’s kind of like the Giant Drop. Places like Vang Vieng jumps around like crazy, like Family Guy. To borrow from my friend’s lament, why couldn’t there be a bar showing re-runs of Seinfeld? From this perspective, Vang Vieng is an experience that lacks Nothing bar a genuinely edifying experience.