The "tubing" (and more) in Vang Vieng

According to "the bible" Vang Vieng is a small town to love and to hate. This party place is filled with guesthouses, restaurants, bars and internet cafes and doesn't have a lot of character. It could be the setting of a modern day Odyssee, where the travelers get trapped by the Friends bars, like the Sirens. In more than 10 bars you can lounge while watching the never ending DVD of Friends... Luckily I could resist.

But the one thing which the town is most famous for is the tubing. With a big stack of rubber tubes on top of the tuktuk, we were driven upriver from the towns center. On the banks of the river there is a number of bars. Each bar has their own contraption setup to increase the fun. It can be a swing, a zipline or a big slide from which all of them you will end up in the water. Once you're done at the one bar, you can take your tube and float to the next bar.

Because I was traveling with a couple of Irish, we had to do the tubing during St. Patricks day. Everyone and everything green.

On the other days we went to the blue lagoon cave by motorcycle. Here the monks were also enjoying the water.

Rock climbing on the limestone rocks.

To the water cave by motorcycle. On the way we came across a village where they were having a local celebration. Karaoke, food and drinks and dancing. And we could not say no to the people who invite you. They actually would grab you by the arm to make you sit down.

Luang Prabang

The Unesco world heritage town Luang Prabang is the second biggest city in Laos with just 150.000 inhabitants. Of these 150.000 there are at least 500 monks, who wake up at 5.30 every morning to receive gifts from the locals and the tourists. With cameras and baskets of rice the tourists line up on the side of the street to give a hand full of rice to the passing monks.
The whole ritual is more like a daily routine for the monks and they all looked kind of borred while receiving their food for the day.

We, the gang from the Gibbon Experience, got to Luang Prabang with the slowboat on the Mekong river. This 2 day trip on a packed boat stops over at a small village and once in Luang Prabang it is interesting to see all these familiar faces. "Hey, you also was on our boat, right?"

We did a daytrip to a very nice waterfall and went bowling, because this is the only venue open after 23.30 at night.

Gibbon Experience Laos

It actually was Daniel from the glaciercourse last summer who pointed me to the Gibbon Experience in northern Laos. Setup by a french guy with help from a local village a number of ziplines are setup in the middle of the forest.
There have been reports of people seeing gibbons...But we haven't. We were the gibbons. Armoured with a harness and 2 ropes with carabiners to click on to the cables you can be a gibbon yourself flying over the canopy. Amazing! And lots of fun.

The treehouses are built in the highest trees in the reserve and can only be reached by zipline. During the walk to treehouse 5, where we would spend the night, we passed treehouse 1 and a couple of very long ziplines. The longest was 500 meter. Teng, our 19 year old guide, wasn't too keen on the safety, so it was good that the rest of the people in our group did pay attention to safety.

The treehouses where we stayed the night, number 5 and 6, were equiped with toilet and shower and running water and a small kitchen. The rumours about rats coming into the treehouse at night were hudgely exaggerated. We have only seen 1 rat. And it could hardly be called a rat, more a field mouse.

Oh, I nearly forgot.... A big thank you to Shane, who found my glasses in the waterfall!