Having booked flights from Vientiane to Hanoi before we left Luang Prabang our last week in Laos was taking shape. We were looking for one last stop before heading to the capital and with Maren’s birthday just a few days away, Vang Vieng seemed like the obvious choice. Popular with backpackers looking to party it has acquired a somewhat infamous reputation.
Our first impressions on arriving were positive. With peak season over the town was somewhat subdued and we managed to find a nice guesthouse on the edge of town by the river away from any of the noisy bars and clubs located further upstream. The mountainous rocks that rise up around this town situated in the valleys of Vientiane province are striking and despite the somewhat ugly sprawl of the guesthouses and restaurants that make up the town there is a real natural beauty about the place.
However, we soon caught a glimpse of one of the less charming aspects of Vang Vieng as we walked around. These are the “TV restaurants” which have, in an attempt to draw in the young crowd, arranged themselves around batteries of televisions which show popular western TV series on continuous rotation. Two shows in particularly dominate the programming, Friends and Family Guy and it’s almost impossible to walk around town without hearing Rachel, Ross, Chandler and rest of the gang blaring out from a nearby eatery. Predictably, to go with the homogeneous diet of western TV, the food follows a similar pattern. Pizza, pasta and even English favourites like “Fish and Chips” or “Roast with Yorkshire Pudding” can readily be found on menus across town. As a result, it’s difficult to find a culinary experience here, especially with regards to local cuisine, as the majority of patrons are happy to wolf down their cheeseburger and fries. However having been forewarned by fellow travellers and the Lonely Planet, we knew what to expect and weren’t particularly disappointed. In fact, somewhat shamefully, we would have to admit to enjoying a couple of pizzas and seeing “The one where Rachel finds outs”.
Besides we weren’t here for the cultural experience we were here to celebrate Maren becoming a year older. Our plan was simple. Find a bar that we could take over with our friends and with any luck get them to let me take over the music by DJing for the night. This proved to be surprisingly easy and it wasn’t long before we’d found a shack-cum- bar called Jokers which was situated in a beautiful location on the river. One of guys that worked at the bar, an English guy called Shaun said they’d be more than happy to have us around for an evening.
The next day along with Trish, Liz (who had accompanied us from Luang Prabang) and their friend Ryan we decided to spend a lazy afternoon on the river. Vincent, Marc and Emilie, who had less time on their hands, were keen to try out the Vang Vieng phenomenon of “tubing”. This involves been driven few kilometres upstream and sitting on huge truck tire inner tubes to float back to town. So whilst waiting for the French trio to float past us we spent the afternoon cooling off in the river with “bucket” sized cocktails. With the beautiful surrounding, the clear blue skies (the first we’d seen in Laos) and music blasting from the bar sound system it was easy to appreciate what had originally drawn people here and we found ourselves starting the party early. When Vincent, Marc and Emily finally appeared on their tubes we’d decided to bring the birthday celebrations forward a couple of days and we gathered back at the river, armed with my laptop hoping to start a much bigger party. Unfortunately the idyllic afternoon did not translate into a perfect night. The well intentioned Shaun, who originally had offered to let us take over for the night was not ultimately in charge of the entertainment policy at Jokers. Over the course of the night it became clear that his partner James, a drug-addled Yaba addict, had the final say on what went on at the bar. Despite his earlier promises he claimed that he had to follow his policy of letting customers rotate plugging in their iPods. I suspect he decided this when he realised that his definition of trance music (ear splitting mind numbing psy trance) did not match mine. That said we still had a great night. After giving up with the laughable music politics at Jokers, we continued long into the night elsewhere making some new friends along the way and in the end the quality of company and conversation more than made up for the lack of quality music later in the night.
The following day was unsurprisingly a quiet one, in which we rested up so we were ready to get “in the tube” and have our turn floating down the river. It wasn’t quite the experience we were expecting with the tubing providing very few little thrills with the pace back to town almost glacial at times. The action, as in town, is at the bars which line up on either side of the river bank at the start of the course. With loud music, waterslides, rope swings, free shots and cheap beer their aim is make you quickly forget any thoughts of using your tube to get back to town. And from the steady stream of Sawngthaews that turn up in town every evening full of drunk guys and girls it seems that they are pretty successful. However, expecting they’d be plenty of opportunities to stop for a drink further downstream Maren and I floated straight through. Unfortunately we were wrong and it wasn’t long before we were back in town with our tubes somewhat bemused by the whole experience. In the evening we met up our French friends for a final dinner together, as they were leaving the following day. They had discovered one of the few places in town that served up simple and honest Laos food. What made the meal special though was the red wine for they’d brought along for Maren’s birthday. We were both very sad to say our au revoirs to them at the end of the evening. By the time Maren’s actual birthday rolled around the less charming aspects of Vang Vieng were becoming harder to ignore and so we booked our transport to Vientiane a day earlier than we had planned. However we did our best to enjoy our final day and I did my best in spoiling Maren to make her birthday special.During our last couple of days we began to reflect on Vang Vieng and the effects of the party scene that has developed in this little corner of Laos. Whilst Luang Nam Tha was a role model for how tourism can have a positive impact in poorer parts of the world, Vang Vieng highlights some of the more damaging aspects. Having over time become a playground for young Westerners looking for a good time, Vang Vieng has become somewhat of a backpacker ghetto and not everyone is happy about it. With cheap booze, readily available drugs and parties running late into the night on the river many of the local population have become deeply unhappy about what has happened to their town. The cultural differences whilst not immediately obvious compound the problem. Laos people are far more conservative than their Thai neighbours never mind the backpackers that come here. As a local teacher explained to Vincent, when you have a country where it is frowned for a women wear tops that reveal more than their forearm stories of drunken girls being seen running through the street at night wearing no clothes at all do not go down well. In fact the sight of guys walking around town bare chested is enough to antagonise locals. Parents are also concerned of the example is being set to their young impressionable teenagers especially in regards to drugs. “Happy” shakes, “Special” pizzas and “O” Tea were on the menu all over town and one bar was brazen enough simply offer “1g of Opium” for 100,000 Kip (less than 8 pounds).
Whilst it may be somewhat disappointing to see the negative effects as a result of pursuing the backpacker dollar, it is also quite understandable, especially in a country as poor as Laos. Unfortunately, I suspect that it is a minority, rather than a majority of locals that are benefitting from the money being made. When the majority of backpackers are just out of school or university looking for a good time rather than a cultural experience it’s not surprising that pizza and burgers end up on the menu instead of Laap and sticky rice. It’s also not surprising that young people away from home on vacation will experiment with drugs when they are so easily available. All of this has made Vang Vieng one of the most difficult places to write. Whilst we might have conducted ourselves with a little more decorum and respect than most who visit here, we still felt uncomfortable with how our fun might have impacted the local community. When there are such differences in both culture and wealth it is inevitable tourism will bring change. This is often at a frightening pace and even with the best intentions this change can be problematic and unsettling. Of course it is not all bad and along with valuable income there are many benefits to both tourists and residents alike in the exchange of cultural ideas and knowledge. However, in the worse cases where those differences are not respected or even recognised the change can be traumatic and destructive. In a place like Vang Vieng, where the number of visitors quickly started to outnumber the residents, a town’s original identity can quickly be destroyed with little forethought to the consequences. Unfortunately, those who suffer the worse are invariably those with the least power or choice in the matter. It therefore has only made both Maren and myself even more determined to travel as responsibly as possible and to always ensure that on balance our travels do far more good than they do harm.
Our time in Laos was almost over. We arrived in Vientiane the following evening with just a day to look around the capital before catching our plane. We took the opportunity to enjoy some more refined food than that available Vang Vieng and I caught up on some blogging while Maren spent the last of our Kip at the market. We also bumped into both Vincent and Marc on the street when we arrived and I’m sure that when we get back home we’ll be seeing them again sometime in the future. Laos had certainly lived up to the hype that we’d heard from many people, both on our travels and back at home. The people are especially friendly and perhaps the most laid back in South East Asia. It always seemed easy to have conversations and interactions with locals that went beyond usual polite pleasantries or practicalities such as ordering your food. Our experiences with the hill tribes and the celebration of the Laos New Year were undoubtedly highlights of the trip and we’d also made some great new friends. Vietnam would have a hard act to follow, however with temperatures over 40 degrees in Vientiane we were happy to be boarding our plane taking us to the more temperate climate of north Vietnam which according to weather reports was nearly 20 degrees cooler. Our first stop would be the buzzing capital of Hanoi, where we had learned that our friend Heidger (who we’d first met in the Cameron Highlands of Malaysia) would also be soon arriving. We were excited at the prospect of meeting up and sharing stories of our adventures over a cold beer.
All the pictures at
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