Beautiful Northern Lao

So there it was. Vang Vieng, the party capital of Lao. And just when I was about to enter this fun filled place, I had to struggle with my vicious ankle injury. I arrived there in the evening and my situation was abysmal. Despite the pain killers, I was literally not able to stand still for more than two seconds. I tried to go out to a club to celebrate Halloween but it was senseless. The only thing I could have done would have been sitting in a corner, so I went back to the hostel. As the pain didn’t decrease over night at all, I decided to go to the city hospital the next day. I was relieved to hear that I didn’t have any serious injury and just a bruise. I also got pain killers and medicine so my situation definitely improved from that day on. The only major problem was that I wasn’t able to drink any alcohol. I mean, at most other places, I wouldn't have minded, but it was a big problem in such a party place. When I went to one of the bars with one of my roommates, everyone was playing a drinking game and I was just sitting there drinking coke. Yay 😨 At least I found some nice people to chat with.

As the pain killers did quite a good job, I was able to walk around pretty much without any pain, so I hired a scooter the next day and went up to a viewpoint. At first, I seriously considered going back as all the drugs made me feel a bit lumbering but that got better after a while and I continued my way to the summit of a mountain which was nothing but easy as there were some lose rocks on the way that you had to climb over and the trail was very steep in general. The view was more than worth the climb though as it was just superb even though the weather was slightly foggy. I had a great view of the city and the surrounding grassland. Afterwards, I went down to the second viewpoint which is some meters lower and on the other side of the mountain so you get a totally different view from there. I met three other travelers there and had a nice chat with them before going back down. On the next day, I went to a really nice waterfall first. However, I nearly had another accident there because while I was standing on a bridge, the wood under my feet suddenly cracked and I had to struggle not to fall down. Definitely a bit of a shock. After seeing the waterfall, I went to the well-known Blue Lagoon which is very popular for swimming. It didn’t make a great impression on me though, so I went to a cave right at the lagoon instead which was great. On the way back, I spotted a sign leading to a viewpoint. I wanted to take a closer look at that and realized that it was not a long way up to that viewpoint. After going uphill for less than an hour, I reached my destination, and what can I say – I got rewarded with one of the best views I got to see on Asia. Mountains, farmland, forest, Vang Vieng, sunshine, blue sky – it couldn’t have been any better. I decided to stay at the summit for a while to enjoy this beautiful view. Later on, I had dinner with two roommates before going to party at one of the night clubs, still without drinking anything, obviously.

On my last full day, the time had finally come to do the activity that Vang Vieng is famous for: tubing. The principle is super easy. You hire a tube, get dropped by the river and get down the river in the tube. It’s not about the time on the river though, it’s about the two stops in between: two bars with a lot of partying and drinking backpackers. And loud music, of course. It was my first day without medicine, so thank God I wasn’t banned from drinking anymore which would have been highly counterproductive for tubing. It was once again a super hot and sunny day and I really enjoyed my time at the bars. I hung out with a bunch of Europeans I had met during the last days and we had a good time together. As it’s highly recommended not to take your phone with you for tubing I can’t show you any pictures of the trip, unfortunately. Anyway, after having a few drinks which made me very drunk, at least for a short time, we made our way to the end of the tubing circuit when it was just getting dark. We returned our tubes and headed back to Vang Vieng. A bit later, I met up with the others for dinner and we went to another hostel for some more minutes. No one was really in the mood for partying anymore though after doing so during the entire afternoon so it was a short last evening for me. My time in Vang Vieng had started off pretty badly with the vicious pain but thank goodness things came to a good end. I got to enjoy some great views, met nice people and had a lot of fun tubing down the river 😊

In the morning, the time had come to move to the next place: Luang Prabang which is known for its historical city center with European style houses and the Tad Sae waterfall which is said to be the best waterfall in entire Lao. So I would lie if I said that I didn’t go to that city without great expectations. And my expectations did absolutely not get disappointed. On my first day, I still had some hours before it got dark, so I decided to go for a walk up to Phou Si, a temple on top of a mountain. It didn’t take me more than a few minutes to get there and walking up the hill wasn’t that difficult, so after a few minutes I got rewarded with a very nice view of the valley, the Mekong and Luang Prabang. And with the temple itself obviously 😉) It was more about the view though. Unfortunately, it was shortly before sunset so there was quite a crowd of people who wanted to watch the sun disappear in the nearby mountains. However, I had enough time to have a look at the surrounding nature and stayed on top of the mountain until it started getting dark. After going back to the hostel for a few minutes, I joined some other guests and went to the night market with them. The market wasn’t that big but good and I had some really good Lao food. The next morning, it was time to see the big and well-known waterfall. There were a couple of other guests, namely Caroline (SUI), Nici (RSA), Miriam (GER), Scott and Bryan (SCO) and Robbie (ENG) at my hostel who wanted to go there as well so we shared a tuktuk and went to the waterfall together. It was definitely more than worth visiting. At first, we passed an enclosure with some endangered bears and then came to the river the waterfall was part of. One thing that immediately stood out was the light blue colour of the water which is very seldom in Lao where the water is usually extremely dirty and therefore really brown. Not at Tad Sae waterfall. We all took loads of photos before we had even reached the waterfall itself. And then, after walking for some more minutes, it was right in front of us. Really high (around 30 meters), with a lot of water falling down at a time, and just beautiful. We all really enjoyed that view. After taking the obligatory group photo, we went up a trail that led us to the top of the waterfall and to a great view of the surrounding landscape. After going down again, we decided to go for a swim in the blue water but the water was really really cold so I didn’t stay in there that long. And there were these little annoying fish that constantly tried to bite me 😁 It didn’t really hurt but it was not super comfortable either 😉 Two of us, Nici and Scott, decided to go into the water at a second place some minutes later, just like some other tourists, when almost everyone suddenly started screaming and panicking. At first, I didn’t know the reason for that, but then I realized there was a snake in the water! 😱 It wasn’t that big, but it was moving towards Nici who was still in the water, so we were all really scared for a while. Luckily the snake eventually turned away from Nici but it was still a very memorable incident. In the evening, we went to the night market once again before having dinner at the superb restaurant right next to our hostel and going to a bar called Utopia afterwards which is sort of a meeting point for everyone who wants to go out at night. We relaxed there with some good old Beer Lao and had a good time.

I hadn’t made any big plans for my last day so I just went out to explore the city center which was really nice indeed with a lot of old houses, numerous cafes with tasty cakes and some temples. I also decided to have my hair cut which worked out better than I had been expecting. I had been a bit scared since the lady who cut my hair didn’t speak and understand any English 😉 Later on, I bought new flip-flops – someone else had apparently thought it would be a good idea to take my old ones out of the hostel shoe shelf 😡 - and went up to the temple mountain once again. In the evening, I joined two new German roommates, Jane and Andi, for dinner, and went to Utopia afterwards with them, Mathilde and Matti from Denmark, Miriam and Nici. While we were talking about our further plans, Jane, Mathilde, Andi, Matti and I realized that they were more or less the same so we decided to meet again in Vietnam a couple of days later which definitely turned out to be a great thing 😊

In my next post I will tell you about my last days in Lao and first ones in Vietnam. Stay tuned!

Cheers

Max