Vang Vieng, Mud Party 3000.

6:35am Nong Khai, border town to Laos.

After the night bus kicked me out directly at the border crossing, I sat down in the small station building. I had just completed another 10-hour journey and was still far from my destination. Originally, I had planned to spend a night in Nong Khai and then continue to Vang Vieng the next day. But unfortunately, I booked my bus ticket for the onward journey from Vientiane (the first city after the border) to Vang Vieng in the evening on my laptop, which was set to German time. So, I had miscalculated by a day and my bus departs at 1:30pm today instead of tomorrow as originally planned. #stupid 🙄 So now I had a pleasant 6 hours to get across the border with my total luggage of about 25kg and explore Vientiane.

My hours of research on how to handle the border crossing led me in circles and in the end, it became clear that I was on my own. I had no idea where exactly I had to go, how to get there, and what I actually had to do. So, I decided to withdraw enough baht at the next ATM and set off. In all the forums and also in my travel guide, it was stated that it is best to pay the Visa on Arrival in US dollars because otherwise, you can expect a pretty bad exchange rate, but I couldn't find out where to get USD in Nong Khai. The border town is more like a border village and I am the only foreigner far and wide. Maybe it's also because of the time, but for the people here, I seem to be a real attraction. 👀 When I asked for information in the next 7-eleven store, I was only answered in Thai and it became clear that no one here understood me. So, I simply walked towards the border on foot, and a hectic border officer pointed me in the right direction. At passport control, the two officers clearly made fun of my name, and I tried to teach the two giggling chickens the correct pronunciation. 👮🏾‍♂️👮🏾‍♀️ Behind the small booth, a crowd of people waits for the rickety shuttle bus over the 'Friendship Bridge'. The 5-minute ride is quite exciting because the bridge crosses the mighty Mekong River. The guardrails are lined with Gloriosa vines, and my heart is filled with joy. 🌺 The eight fans attached to the ceiling in the bus are rotating and blowing my hair in all directions. The little Laotian girl sitting across from me seems to find it hilarious. 👧🏽 At the other end of the bridge, everything goes very quickly. My visa costs me 1300 baht (which is about 37€) and for an additional 200 baht, I take a taxi to the 22km distant city. The streets are lined with grand-looking villas and houses, clearly showing the influence of the former French colony. This whole procedure took two hours, and I am relieved that I found the 'travel agency' from where my next bus departs right away. When I show the employee my already purchased online ticket, he points to the clock. Yes, I know that I am 4 hours early... 🙄 But that's not what he meant. He hands me a ticket and taps the departure time 5 times. Now I finally realize that he has issued me a ticket for an earlier bus. 9:30am instead of 1:30pm. Perfect. 😊

As soon as the bus leaves the city, my eyes close. I stretch my feet out onto the seat next to me and wake up three hours later. Around me, deep jungle. Immediately, I start grinning from ear to ear. Finally out of the city. Finally in the wilderness. I spend the next two hours observing the passing mountains, rivers, and small villages that somehow remind me of The Jungle Book.

Arriving in Vang Vieng, I walk through the town on foot. The arrival at the hostel is breathtaking because right behind the reception, there is an open lounge with a fantastic terrace. Direct view of the mist-covered mountains and the surrounding rainforest. ⛰️

I share my room with two girls and two guys, whom I immediately start talking to. Although I have just completed a 19-hour journey, I join Gigi (a super cute Vietnamese girl) and Peter (a YouTuber from Vancouver), who want to explore the area.

Vang Vieng is a relatively small village right on the Nam Song River, which really invites exploration. After dinner, we walk across one of the three wooden bridges towards the mountains and follow the signs to the foot of Pha Ngern.

We decide to take the climb to possibly see the sunset from above. An hour's climb on a rather unconsolidated path, which was secured in Lao style... meaning with a cord stretched from one stick to another. 😅 Parts of the trail had to be climbed rather than hiked, surrounded by bamboo, alokasia, and banana trees. 🌴 Once at the top, completely out of breath and completely sweaty from head to toe, we linger with the magnificent view. Breathtaking. I can't find words that could even remotely convey the beauty that can be seen when the clouds surround the surrounding mountain peaks.

We decide to make the descent while it is still daylight. When we arrive back at the hostel, I share a shower with four lizards 🐉 and fall into bed completely exhausted but absolutely happy.

July 24

Breakfast on the terrace of the hostel tastes even better thanks to the view. Peter, Gigi, Baptisté, and I then stroll through the pretty empty streets and rent two motorcycles for the day at the nearest stand. 🛵 I let Gigi persuade me to let her drive since she is only staying in Vang Vieng for one day. Mistake. Big mistake. 🙄 We drive out of the city over the rickety wooden bridge over the Nam Song River, and pretty quickly, the paved road changes into a dirt track.

Due to the changeable weather throughout the day, parts of our route are completely muddy. After half an hour of driving, we arrive at Blue Lagoon 2, which is completely empty. Peter and Baptisté immediately climb the diving tower and jump into the azure blue water.

After two hours, a group of about 20 Koreans arrives, all of them fully clothed, who rush into the water. One guy even jumped in with a rain poncho. 😂 #makesnosense

We decide to continue our tour and make our way to Blue Lagoon 3. I quickly realize that Gigi is a rather insecure driver, and before I know it, we end up in the mud for the first time. Gigi slows down in every situation, causing the motorcycle under us to slide quite quickly. Not a big deal, the first abrasions are hardly noticeable. I talk to Gigi about the fact that in some situations, it is actually better to accelerate instead of braking, and I give her a few tips.

Another half an hour and a pretty muddy road between beautiful-looking rice fields later, we arrive. The lagoon is even more beautiful than the first one, and I immediately throw my clothes aside to swing into the water from the diving tower on a rope. 🏊🏼‍♀️ The highlight of the hours spent here is the wrestling match between Peter and a monk on a plank above the water and the overgrown path into the jungle towards a viewpoint.

The short bouts of drizzling rain can be endured wonderfully at 26°C on the raft. At some point during swimming or during the countless jumps into the water from the zipline, I lost my septum piercing... bye bye 👋🏽

On the way back, I decide to let Gigi drive again because she really enjoyed it. I use the time to take photos of the view and take a closer look at the area we are driving through.

However, Gigi could hardly implement my advice for a safer driving style, and halfway through the journey, we slide a good distance through the mud and end up in the ditch. Yay, free mud bath! 😅 To make the abrasions on one side match, the other side had to suffer now. Blood is running through the layer of mud from my knee. Mud was everywhere. My shoes, my dress, my legs, my arms, my phone, my hair. Went for a full-body bath. In the mud. Gigi got it as well, but fortunately, nothing worse happened to either of us. I drive the rest of the way back myself.

Arriving at the hostel, I stand under the shower completely covered in mud. Fortunately, this morning I handed in all my laundry at the hostel to be washed, so I have no other clothes except for my sleeping clothes. After the one-hour washing procedure, we have dinner together with Johanna (a German girl who just joined our dorm) in the city, and Gigi pays for my meal and additionally offers me an overnight stay at her home in Vietnam as an apology. I wasn't even mad at her because the roads were really extremely slippery, so that anyone could have slipped, and I'm even more delighted with the gesture. afterwards, I help Gigi get her luggage to the bus stop, and we say goodbye as she takes the night bus to her next destination.

July 25

After breakfast at the hostel, I was supposed to meet Peter in town to rent bicycles. But since I can't find him at the agreed time and place, I walk around the area a bit and stroll along the riverbank.

Eventually, I decide to rent a bicycle (without gears) for 15000kip, which is about 1.50€, for the day even without Peter. I ride east over rocks and stones, on roads that consist only of rocks, through small settlements and between rice fields. After an hour's ride, I arrive at a "restaurant" by the river, park my bike, and walk another 20 minutes into the riverside forest.

At the end of the path, I find the Kaeng Nyui waterfall. I am the only person here far and wide and speechless. The nature around me leaves me in awe, and I decide to cool off in one of the pools around the waterfall and let the surroundings work on me. 🧘🏼‍♀️

An absolutely incredible experience. Alone at a waterfall in the middle of the jungle. I sit down at the viewpoint and linger at this magical place for a few hours. 🌠

When I ride back to Vang Vieng, I run into Peter. We laugh about the chance encounter and find out that we just missed each other earlier in the day. We ride together out of the city towards the west, and we find ourselves on small trails between the rice fields until we reach a dry riverbed.

We follow the riverbed for a few kilometers deep into the rainforest, sometimes having to push our bikes or carry them up small hills until we suddenly see a motorcycle standing in the riverbed. How the hell did the Lao guy, who is unknown to me, get here with his bike while cutting off unfamiliar fruits from a tree with a machete? WTF? 🤔 A little further on, we pass three children who keep sliding into the riverbed from the side with a Pepsi sign. There is really nothing to see around us except brushwood, dense jungle thickets consisting of banana trees, teak trees, palms, and countless other subtropical plants. My little botanist heart races. 🌴🌱

We discover a small sign nailed to a tree that says "next cave 100m" and points in a direction. We park our bikes and walk in the designated direction. What awaits us there is exciting and creepy at the same time. We reach a cave through the thicket, and just a few meters inside, the daylight fades behind us.

I give Peter my flashlight and also turn on the flashlight of my cell phone. We venture further into the darkness, climbing over rocks and crawling under ledges. Around us, there is an all-engulfing silence, interrupted only by the flapping of bats' wings. 🦇

When we reach the next spot where we would have had to crawl through a rather low gap, I decide to take a photo in that direction first and turn pale when I see the photo. A shrine or something similar can be seen a little further inside the cave, and I have definitely seen too many horror movies in my life to have the courage to approach it even one more meter. Peter agrees with me in my thinking, and when a bat flies right in front of my face, it's a done deal that we have seen enough of this cave.

On the way back, the children, as well as the lonely Lao man with his motorcycle, have also disappeared, and we arrive back in town just in time for sunset.

July 26

Chillout day. Apart from a visit to the night market with Johanna, I didn't do anything at all.

In the evening, Johanna and I sit in the Sakura Bar for two hours because they served free alcohol there, and we could observe the masses of drunk Koreans. Amusing is an understatement. 😂

July 27 Vang Vieng

Johanna tickles my foot, and I open my eyes and look sleepily into her smiling face. It's 8:30am and the sun is shining through the window into our dorm. Today, I woke up on the right side of the bed. Sun! ☀️ Since I arrived, I haven't had a single sunny day. Johanna and I have breakfast, pick up Baptisté at the hostel, rent bicycles (this time ones with 5 gears) for the equivalent of 2€, and ride towards the mountains again. The road along the river, which I have been riding along for the past few days, is completely flooded today due to the heavy rain last night. 🌊 In the hostel, Baptisté said he put on his waterproof hiking boots... unfortunately, they are absolutely useless on this flooded road. 😂

We ride to the foot of Pha Ngern. For 10,000kip (one euro), we are allowed to pass at the small hut for the ascent. The ascent is intense. The limestone mountains rise steeply. The rocks we had to climb up are incredibly sharp-edged and very slippery due to the rain, and the rest of the trail consists mainly of mud and smooth tree roots.

After an hour of sweating, it suddenly starts pouring rain. And I mean really pouring. 🌧️ The already rather strenuous uphill path is now additionally flooded, and it is really helping us to flow uphill mostly against the current. 🌊 Of course, the safety measures on the trail consist only of bamboo planks or a thin cord stretched from one branch to another. After an hour and a half, we reach a fork where we decide to continue the ascent and hike all the way to the top instead of going in the other direction towards the first hut.

I empty half of my water bottle into me, wrap my camera and Baptisté's passport in my towel to protect them from the wet, and walk ahead. We are all three soaking wet and sweating like crazy, so we have to stop every now and then to apply a new layer of mosquito spray, as we are literally being eaten alive by the countless creatures here. 🦟 We walk through a pretty thick fog, the rain stops, and through the thicket above our heads, we spot the blue sky. A few meters further, we reach the hut at the summit. See for yourself. 👀

I put my wet top in the sun and lie down on the rock directly at the edge for half an hour, closing my eyes. The sun feels unbelievably good. ☀️ The past few days have been really cloudy, and even in Bangkok, I hardly saw any sun. I soak up the sunshine literally. 🧘🏼‍♀️ After the break, we start the descent, which turns out to be much more difficult than the ascent. Most of the way, we slide down in the mud.

Baptisté sets a brisk pace, walking downhill backwards, and although Johanna and I initially smirk at this tactic, we quickly adopt it as well since it is clearly safer. 🏃🏼‍♀️ So we climb down the mountain at a snail's pace in reverse, hear a few thunderclaps above us, and get caught in the rain again. ⛈️ Mud Party 3000. But thanks to Baptisté's technique, we safely arrive at the foot of the mountain after two and a half hours and ride back to the city in the rain, which takes half an hour. Under the watchful eyes of a few lizards, I stand under the shower again, this time with all my clothes. 💧

We return the rented bicycles, have something to eat, stroll through the city center at the night market, and are overjoyed as we enjoy a beer on the loungers in the hostel's common area.

Tomorrow, Next Stop: Luang Prabang.