After a much shorter and more punctual bus ride than the one from Luang Prabang we arrive in Vientiane, the capital of Laos.  As capital cities go it is very small, only 250,000 people, and there do not appear to be any buildings over about 5 stories here, so the city is quite spread out.  The Mekong river runs along one side of the city, and forms the border between Thailand and Laos.

We spend a few hours walking the city and go by the presidential palace, and down along the Mekong where they have built a long wall to protect the city from flooding, and a park in behind the wall.  There is a large statue in the park that has a few tourists around it, but we do not find out until later that it is of King Anouvong, the last king of Vientiane – clearly this has not made our history books back home yet.

Extending up from the presidential palace is a long boulevard that ends at one of the fairly small number of tourist attractions here in Vietiane – their own version of the Arc de Triomphe.  Known as Patuxai or the Victory Arch, it was built to commemorate those that fought to get independence from France – just a little irony there!

There is a big gold colored Chedi here as well that is featured on the flag of Laos, and a couple of other locations that are considered tourist highlights, but after the arch we are not overly impressed and just decide to walk back to our hotel and start looking for dinner.

None of this is news to us as many other people we talked to had mentioned that Vientiane was nothing worth stopping for, and we would certainly concur that for us it is nothing more than a waypoint on a trip either to or from much more interesting destinations farther north.

That pretty much ends the trip for us, tomorrow we will make our way back to Bangkok and then the next day begins the long flight back to Seattle……

I may have jinxed our luck with the rain in my previous post as we woke up this morning to dark skies and liquid sunshine. Just like at home though the weather often changes fairly quickly, and by the time we are finished our breakfast the rain has mostly stopped and the skies are just a little overcast.  Our plan for today is to take a long walk/hike across the river and through some rice fields to a cave we have heard about.  It is completely in the opposite direction of all the madness of the tubing so it seems like a good way to kill a few hours.

There is a bridge just down from our hotel that leads across the river, and just like the 520 bridge back home, it is a toll bridge 🙂  Depending on how you are crossing (walking, motorbike, tuk-tuk, etc.) the toll varies from about $0.50 to just over a dollar.  In local standards this is a decent amount, and having the bridge concession is likely quite lucretive as there is a lot of traffic going back and forth.

On the other side of the river is a small village and then a road that heads off perpendicular to the river into a valley that we have seen from our hotel balcony.  There is a loop you can do through the valley with various stops along the way at caves and other sights, but the whole loop is about a 35km bike ride and supposedly some rough terrain in a few places, so having had a bike experience already we are just walking.

A couple of km down the road there is a sign marking the trail to the first cave.  There is a massive limestone karst rising straight out of the rice fields that we can see from our hotel, and that is where the cave is.  The path goes right through the rice fields and to call it a trail is really a fairly liberal use of the term.  It is probably about another km through the rice fields and then we start to get close to the karst and into the forest.  As soon as we get near though we encounter a small stand out in the middle of nowhere manned by a couple of Laos people – they want 10,000 kip each (about $1.25) for us to see the caves.  We pay our ‘admission’ and one of the fellows waves his arm in the general direction of the path we are supposed to follow and off we go.

About half way down that trail we run into another young Laos boy who points towards the cave and starts to lead the way through the jungle.  We did not really think much of this, and thought it was perhaps part of the 10,000 admission we paid for him to show us where the cave was.  When we get to the cave, he points inside and pulls a few LED headlamps out of his bag and in we go; however, after about 50 feet he gestures to a small opening that we need to go through and then asks us if we want a guide, and there it is – the bait and switch again!  For another 50,000 kip he will guide us through the cave, otherwise he wants his lamps back and we are free to carry on by ourselves if we like.  We were feeling a little burnt out, and the approach just turns us off, so we said no and left the cave and made our way back to the main road. We walked down the road a little way taking in some of the scenery in the valley, and then turned around and headed back towards town and our hotel – it was getting to be time for lunch, and one of those sandwiches on the fresh french bread was looking pretty good.

We got back to town at just the right time because the skies decided to open up again for some more rain. We just made it to a place for lunch before it started coming down fairly hard, but we figure by the time lunch is done it might pass again so this works out OK for us anyway.

Due to the party activity that happens here in the evenings, most of the guests in the town are more than a little tired and slow moving in the morning/early afternoon, and I think because of that the restaurants have adapted their furniture for the crowds.  Almost every place where food is served, at least half of the tables are more like bed with some throw pillows and a short table in the middle.  Customers can then lay back and relax while recuperating from the night before, or while having their lunch.  A lounger would not be much good without some entertainment, so to keep the patrons entertained all of these restaurants have 2 or 3 TVs playing non-stop reruns of either Friends, or The Family Guy.

We are about half done our lunch when the heavens decide to really open up, and we are now right in the middle of some serious industrial strength rain, so Mrs. Columbus and I hunker down into our loungers and watch us some Family Guy!!  6 episodes later Mrs. Columbus is feeling a little numb – I think because Family Guy is not really much of a rom-com, and the rain has finally let up so we venture out to find ourselves a bananna pancake and do some last minute shopping.

We will be leaving here tomorrow for Vientiane and the start of our journey back to Seattle, so we go back to our hotel to start to pack up and then meet our friends Jackie, Bruce and Stephanie for our last dinner in Vang Vieng.   The rain continues to come off and on, so we decide to have dinner beside the river at the hotel so that we don’t get trapped out in a downpour.  The meal was quite nice, and with tranquil setting, and the good company we really enjoyed our last night here.

Between the river, the karst formations, the mountains, valleys and rice fields, the scenery here is stunning.  You can scan the horizon in any direction and see something that is worth a dozen photos, but you know that none of them will do the area justice and is just something that must be seen.  The drive here was impressive and I can only imagine what it would be like to do that trip on a motorbike, or by car where you could just stop anywhere you wanted to and take in the views.

However as they say every rose has it’s thorn, and at some point in it’s recent history Vang Vieng went from sleepy little half way point on the journey to/from Vientiane to what feels like Fort Lauderdale during spring break.  The town is only about a dozen blocks long and 3-4 blocks wide but is full of guesthouses and bars.  This has become a main stop on the young backpacker circuit for the party atmosphere and to go tubing on the river.

They say there is a new bar/guesthouse being opened here about once a week and it is easy to believe that, there are loads and loads of young people here that all come for the tubing experience.  Basically the way it works is this: you pay 115,000 kip (about $15US) to rent an inner tube for the day, included in that price is a ride in a tuk-tuk up the river about 4km where they drop you off and you float your way back to the town.  If you return your tube before 6pm then they refund you 60,000 kip (about $8US) so it costs about 7 bucks for the day, if you return the tube late then you forfeit the deposit and the day cost you $15US.

The twist is that along the top about third of the trip the river bank is lined with open air bars that will toss you a line as you float down river and if you want they will pull you in to their bar for a few Beer Lao, or some ‘buckets’.  The buckets are little beach pails that they fill with a concoction of Laos whiskey, Red Bull, and various other things, but the whiskey is likely the cheapest ingredient so the drinks are typically very strong.

You can go from bar to bar on your tube, stopping or not, and it is fairly easy to get waaaaay over served!  These bars are packed with people all having a big party.  At some bars there will be water slides or rope swings where you can jump/swing out into the river, at various levels of intoxication.  There are tons of injuries here every year and in the morning when we are walking around town at least 10% or more of the young people we see have a limp, or bandages on some part of their body.  There are reports that on average about one person dies from alcohol/tubing accidents here every other week!

The bar scene does not appeal to us at all, but the tube on the river part sounds fun and refreshing so along with the people we met from Australia (Bruce, Jackie, and Stephanie) we decide to go see what all the fuss is about.  The scene that unfolds on the river banks is I guess what you might expect to see if college students made the rules and ran the world – the club music is thumping, the buckets are flowing and people are cheering and dancing at the bars.  The place is surely a parent’s worst nightmare, but both Mrs. Columbus and I acknowledge that in our mis-spent youth we would totally have gone to a place like this 😉

Anyway, we are not intending to stop so just slip our inner tubes into the water and start the 4km journey down stream.  The bar strip ends about 1/4 of the way in and the scenery once again delivers as we float along past outcroppings and jungle at a leisurely pace.  The whole trip takes about a couple of hours if you don’t make any stops, and fortunately I have brought the ‘Joey-cam’ along to capture the trip down river.

(The internet connection here is not adequate enough to upload any of the video, but I will post some once we get home)

Even thought it is only a couple of hours from top to bottom, lots of the people who go out don’t return in time to get their deposit on the tube back – in fact I am sure the rental place assumes that probably more than 80% of the people either show up late or just leave their tube at a bar or beach along the river, and the rental place just keeps the extra revenue.  We talk to more than one group of people who tell us about how they got back to town at 8 or 9pm, coming down river in the pitch black (the sun has completely set behind the mountains by 7pm) and hoping to stop before floating past the town (which has certainly happened a number of times before).

It is a great experience for us, but a bit sad for the surroundings.  It is hard to understand why people would travel half way around the world to just go to a big party when they could easily do that back home.  There are so many incredible things to see and experience here, but you miss the majesty of that if you are not getting up until after noon and fighting off a hangover while you get yourself back in the rental line for the next day of ‘tubing’ – hindsight is 20/20 I guess.

So far we have been really lucky with the weather here – technically it is the rainy season, but not a single day here or in Thailand where there was much rain to speak of, at least in the day time.  Hopefully that will continue for the next few days as we are hoping to do a short hike or bike ride out into the rice fields and hills just outside the town and away from the insanity 🙂

Yesterday we made the journey from Luang Prabang to Vang Vieng in Laos.  There are only a few ways to make this journey: local bus, ‘VIP’ bus, minivan, or hire a private van.  We quickly rule out the local bus because no matter what our level of style and comfort is, it will always be higher than what the local bus can deliver.  The discussion then comes down to the other three – I am fully prepared to pay the 800,000 kip for a private car but Mrs. Columbus thinks that is way too much money and not nearly the adventure that the bus would be so we opt for the ‘VIP’ bus as a compromise, sacrificing a little speed for hopefully a little extra leg room over the minivan.

Our pre-book arrangement includes a pickup from our hotel, and we are told the trip is 5 hours.  We choose the 9:30am bus thinking that we would get to Vang Vieng in time to settle in and then do a bit of exploring before dinner.  It is worth noting that the distance to cover is only 275km (170 miles) so 5 hours seems like about twice the time it should take, but we have seen the winding roads already so we know we won’t be setting any speed records.  Our friend Ian had told us some stories about how it never really is on time, and how the bus driver would have a wander around the bus, have a smoke, start the bus, stop the bus, have a smoke, etc., and we had a good laugh about that before we left Thailand, so when a tuk-tuk arrives at our hotel promptly at 8:30am to pick us up for the transfer to the bus station we decide maybe he was exaggerating a little for effect and think things are off to a good start!

Well that is were the story gets laughable.  We get to the bus station just before 9am, plenty of time to get our tickets and a seat on the bus.  Our bus is there waiting, and while it says VIP on the front, I suspect that maybe the last VIP to ride on the bus was Ho Chi Minh because it is definitely starting to show it’s wear.  Never the less, at 9:15am they announce that we should all get on the bus to prepare to depart.  The bus is about half full and I am thinking this is actually pretty good we will be able to spread out and there will be no-one sitting in the isles (we have actually seen this before in Thailand on a VIP bus).  Just before 9:30 the driver steps on and starts up the bus, the air conditioning comes on and it looks like we are getting ready to go, then the driver walks off the bus – to have a smoke.  Then smoke finished he goes for a slow wander around the bus and I suddenly realize that Ian had described what was actually happening!  I laugh to myself and think OK, this is SE Asia after all and stuff like this really does happen, so we are going to be 15 mins or so late and then we will get going.

Nope!  We sit on the bus for about 30 mins while there is a heated debate outside between some tourists and some locals, we think it about some confusion between what they thought they purchased and what they were being offered, but anyone who has traveled here should know that it is tough to win an argument with the locals.  As 10am approaches it looks like that argument has dissolved (all the Laos people involved have just walked away) when another bus pulls into the station and a bunch of people start getting off – we know there is not a 2nd bus from here going to Vang Vieng, and it is too early for any incoming buses to be arriving so this is a little puzzling, but when a 3rd bus pulls in beside us it gets even more odd.  After about another 10 or 15 minutes the driver of our bus steps in and turns the bus off, and therefore the air conditioning, and another 15mins after that just as it gets fairly hot on the bus we start to hear rumors that we are transferring to another bus (the 3rd one that arrived).  There is some mumbling about our bus not having the right driver or something, so we start to move our bags from the first bus to the 3rd bus – in the meantime the people from the 2nd bus have also all been moved onto the 3rd bus, and the result is that the bus is now actually too full, so they find some local people to kick off so that everyone has a seat.  It is now almost 2 hours after when we were supposed to leave, and we have gone from a nice spacious half full bus, to a very full and somewhat crowded bus, but to cap it off for good measure we notice them loading what looks like a few spare parts into a junk drawer in the front of the bus – traveling with extra wheel bearings is normal right?!?

Between all the waiting around and loading, unloading and reloading buses we have met a few people here including a couple from Australia traveling with their daughter and have at least passed the time away sharing stores and having a laugh at the whole situation as there is nothing else you really can do.

Finally, the driver gets onto the bus (he must be done both of his cigarettes by now), closes the door and the bus starts moving!  I am seated next to a girl from New York who is spending a couple of months here traveling around a few countries and we start to pass the time talking about the various places we have been and things we have seen, so at least the next 5 hours are hopefully going to pass quickly.

There is a good part to the trip though, and that is that the scenery is breath-taking.  There is really no way to describe the view as the bus winds it’s way up and down the mountains, valleys and switch-back turns.  I can only imagine that this is what it might be like to drive through the Andes or something as the country side does not really resemble any place I have seen before.

After a stop for lunch at a place quite literally in the middle of nowhere and then another stop as we pop out of the mountains to cool the brakes on the bus down (yes, we really stopped so that they could pour cold water on the brakes) we make our way into Vang Vieng – the trip has taken about 9.5 hours including the delay at the start so I guess we are just a little off of the 5 hours we were told it would take 🙂

If we had not met some interesting people to talk to and the scenery had not been so fantastic we would have been much more disgruntled, but we manage to take it all in stride and head off to our hotel to get settled in for the night.  The hotel we are staying at is right on the river, and our room is on the top floor looking right out over the river, some rice fields, and some spectacular limestone karst formations!

It is our last full day in Luang Prabang before we head off to our next stop in Vang Vieng, and the last thing we have on our list to do here is go to see the Pak Ou Cave.

Before that story though, I have to give full credit to Mrs. Columbus for mustering herself at the crack of dawn this morning to go out and see the giving of the alms.  This gets a lot of reviews in the travel books, and the tourists get up early in the morning to see the monks make their way through the streets receiving their donations from the local worshipers.  It starts at around 6am, so I decided that a little extra sleep and then catching up on some work is in order, so for the full lowdown you will have to read about Mrs. Columbus’ experience.

After Mrs. Columbus’ triumphant return we are on to the next part of the day. Pak Ou cave is actually 2 separate caves eroded into the same limestone outcropping along the Mekong River about 2 hours up river from here by boat, or about an hour by tuk-tuk. Many people see the caves on the way here from Thailand if they take the slow boat down the Mekong, but since we flew here we needed to go from town.  I had seen some pictures of the caves before and thought it looked impressive as it rises basically straight up out of the riverbank, so wanted to see it before we left in case it is a long time before we ever make it out this way again.

We have been trying to decide for a couple of days now if we should go by boat or by car – they each have their own pros and cons and in the end we decide to go by car because it is a bit faster, and also we can stop along the way anywhere we want to if there is something worth seeing.  Of course the scenery along the way is spectacular!

I’d have to agree with Mrs. Columbus’ assessment that the caves were a bit of a let down compared to what we had visualized.  They were impressive in their own right and I suppose if you were encountering them on your way down river on the slow boat it would be a welcome distraction, but we have seen a few caves in Thailand and some of them set the bar pretty high.

I was glad we went, the short trip across the river was nice, and I can see why it gets mentioned in the guide books, but there are attractions we have done here that are rewarding enough to do them again, and this is probably not one of them.

On the way back to the city we stop at a couple of villages to do some shopping of course!  The first village they refer to as the ‘Whisky Village’ where people can stop to get some of the local spirits – Laos whisky (lao-laos), and red or white rice wine.  Given that it is a couple of dollars per bottle, I doubt that hand crafting for smoothness is part of their mantra, and I would guess that their criteria for aging is rated in days not years, we decide to give it a pass – well that and the snakes and scorpions in the various bottles is not an upsell feature to us!

Next we stop at a village where they make local crafts – weaving and paper goods in particular. We have seen a lot of silk and cloth weaving in our travels, but not a lot of paper making, so this is something new for us to see.  One of the shops we stop at is hand making sheets of paper with bamboo leaves embedded in the fibers.  The finished sheet has a rough artsy sort of texture and the leaves seem to be magically suspended in the middle of the sheets.  It is interesting to watch the ladies making the paper right from raw materials, in this case tree bark, boiled to break down the fibres and then hammered in an oversized mortar and pestle, dissolved into water and then finally strained onto screens to be placed into the sun to dry.  I’m sure if I were an artist this would be great material to paint or draw on!

Our last stop of the day takes us to the grave of Herni Mouhot.  Henri Mouhot was a French naturalist and explorer in the early 1800s that was perhaps over credited with re-discovering Angkor Wat – of course the Khmer people had not really misplaced it – but Mouhot stumbled upon the temples while exploring, and his writings of them when sent back to England and France was perhaps the launching point for the colonization of Indochina that followed.  On a subsequent expedition up the Mekong River Mouhot got as far as what is now Luang Prabang, and succumbed to Malaria in a tiny village about 20 miles from the city.  In a strange twist of irony Mouhot’s grave was consumed by the jungle and ‘lost’ until it was re-discovered in 1990 and there is now a permanent monument there to mark the spot.

As travelers/explorers ourselves it is a little inspiring to see the memorial and to think that we are treading some of the same ground.  The site is very tranquil, and I am glad we added this stop to the day’s journey.

Our last night here and we need to pack up, tomorrow we are taking a bus to Vang Vieng and I suspect it may be a big day.  The trip is only 275km but apparently takes 5 or 6 hours on the bus because of the winding nature of the road – hopefully I will not have to sit next to any livestock…. 😉