Luang Pradang to Vientiane

Sunday February 21st

Tuk tuk arrived on time and took us to the bus station where we boarded the VIP coach. This was amusing because someone had numbered the backs of the seats in magic marker, got it wrong and put an indistinct cross through each number. They had then tried again (successfully) writing on the side beneath the window. Consequently with two sets of numbers and at least six different nationalities trying to decipher them, seating everyone took a lot of discussion and time.

The trip south was very comfortable, we had air conditioning and increasingly dramatic scenery with near vertically sided high mountains of limestone. The coach crawled up mountains at about 25mph and crawled down again. The road was well surfaced, but narrow and twisty following the topography. We stopped at a wayside canteen and were fed a delicious lunch of boiled vegetables and miso-like soup.

Arriving in Vang Veng, we took an overcrowded tuk tuk to the Villavay guesthouse, where I am writing this on the verandah of our bungalow before going to see what the town is like.

The view across the river is spectacular, rounded top bare or partially forested limestone mountains rising vertically from the edges of the plain. The town is full of loud Australian bars and saloons full of twenty-somethings attentively watching videos of cartoons on televisions. This isn't however what they are seeing, we know from young travellers we met at the Gibbon Experience that they have imbibed 'happy' shakes or pizzas and are lost in worlds of their own. The 'happy' comestibles are laced with hallucinogenics. Youngsters come to Vang veng to go tubing down the river from bar to bar in the morning, then spend the rest of the day in drug induced torpor.

Dinner occurred on the terrace of a shack overlooking the river at sunset. Sounds romantic but actually entertaining as it was closer to farce with the diners complaining about erratic service and randomly selected dishes. It was a chaotic meal even by Lao standards ( and the word 'Laos' is suspiciously similar to 'Chaos').

Monday February 22nd

After a slightly less chaotic breakfast we were picked up by minibus and taken to the disused airstrip where an 'express' coach was waiting. This set off only half an hour late, driving through increasingly flatter landscape until we reached Vientiane. A hopelessly overcrowded saamlaw (songthaw) took us to the 'centre' which turned out to be only a block from the Lao Orchid hotel where we are now.