Day 140 Blue Lagoon

We have now arrived in Vang Vieng. For a long time, Vang Vieng was the Mallorca of Laos, where wild parties could be celebrated. One highlight was tubing, floating down the river in an inflated car tire. There were dozens of bars on the banks where you could stop and party. But when the death rate started to rise, the conservative government of Laos closed all the bars along the river and Vang Vieng became quieter. But the landscape is supposed to be very beautiful. These were the information we had collected about Vang Vieng.

Today we wanted to visit one of these beautiful natural phenomena. For this, we rented a motorbike and headed to Blue Lagoon 1.

Due to the rain, the water was not as blue as we had seen in the pictures, but you could imagine why this place is called Blue Lagoon. Unfortunately, it was very crowded here and countless, mostly Chinese tourists were already bathing in the lagoon, so it wasn't really fun to stay here for a long time.

So we visited the nearby cave. We expected it to be a tourist cave with a path and lighting, like the other caves we had visited. But the first challenge was to reach the cave entrance. The path was quite steep and had some climbing sections.

At the cave entrance, it turned out that it was not a tourist cave at all. We happily climbed around inside a bit and would have liked to explore it deeper.

But reason prevailed, we didn't have proper light and good footwear. So we explored the entrance area and tried to take some photos. The nice thing was that we were completely alone in the cave, all the tourists came here only to swim.

After a while, we set off to Blue Lagoon 3. Unfortunately, we had to leave the paved road and take a side road to get there. It was again littered with puddles and potholes.

Therefore, we couldn't drive too fast. But we had time to admire the karst landscape with the rice fields and the forests.

We made it to Blue Lagoon 3 without an accident and were overtaken a few times by buggies whose drivers had a lot of fun racing through all the puddles.

The Blue Lagoon 3 was not as beautiful as the Blue Lagoon 1, but it was much less crowded here. Unlike Blue Lagoon 1, Blue Lagoon 3 was also artificially created. We stayed here for a while and enjoyed bathing in the cool water.

The Chinese tourists were very easy to recognize because they were the ones wearing life jackets and not swimsuits. They were simply bathing in their normal clothes. It was somewhat special to observe. And it seems that none of them can swim, but they still want to swim.

After a while, we strolled through the forest next to Blue Lagoon 3 before slowly making our way back.

On the way back, we passed a viewpoint that we had noticed on the way there, but saved it for the return trip. But to enjoy the view, we had to climb a mountain for 30 minutes. But the effort was worth it. The view from the platform was simply breathtaking. The view of the rice fields, nestled between the karst rocks in the valley, together with the forests and rocks, simply invites you to enjoy.

It was hard to tear ourselves away from this view, but we had to if we wanted to be back at the hostel before dark. And none of us wanted to drive in the darkness.

Back at the hostel, we enjoyed a good dinner and the free whiskey offered by the hostel.