Vang Vieng is a is a small rural town on the Nam Song River in Laos, about 130 km north of the capital, Vientiane. Our first impression, as we cycled into town, was that Vang Vieng has suffered thanks to its geography, which is simply marvelous.  Limestone karsts tower over the place providing ample scope for rock climbing and caving while the surrounding area seems perfect for a variety of other activities – sitting back and enjoying the landscape, for example.

But this does not seem to be the purpose of most tourists.  Instead, Vang Vieng is now the Kuta Beach or the Phuket of Laos. It’s a place that most tourists seem to leave with a headache, probably a gut-ache and at least one article of clothing emblazoned with "In the Tubing - Vang Vieng".  As far as I understand, tubing is floating down a relatively dirty river on an inflated car inner tube – that thing inside a tyre that preceded tubeless tyres, named because they do not have a tube.  But western tourists are not going to pay 50,000 kip simply to float down a dirty river.  Instead, they want to indulge while floating, which is pretty easy when a couple of standard drinks cost a dollar.  Invest 100,000 kip or about $12.50 and you can go tubing for the day and have 10 standard drinks.  And what about the locals?  Laos’s people are very modest.  Swimming is something for children and wearing skimpy swimming outfits is fine while you are immersed but definitely taboo when you emerge.  Thus, if you are going to go tubing and be getting out for drinks along the way or to return to your guesthouse, then a plastic bag of clothes seems a useful accompaniment. Alternatively, you can say stuff the locals.  After all, a lot of the locals who make money from alcohol and tubing, probably say this themselves. 

The attraction of Vang Vieng for tourists means that accommodation is ridiculously cheap when visiting outside of the November-April peak season.  A relatively clean double room with a fan and a zip hot water heater will set you back about 50,000 kip. If traveling by yourself you will, quite rightly, pay roughly the same. But you will get $3 of single-supplement-moaning-rights that you can use profusely.  Likewise, there is a fantastic array of food and booze.  If you eat only greasy burgers and drink Heineken, then you will be in heaven. You will, however, be a little poorer than those who muster the courage to eat local foods and transfer their beer tastes to Beer Lao; hard to do, I know.

We had the fine fortune of choosing the Mulberry Café for dinner. It’s an organic place, which more or less meant that it was prohibited territory for the typical Vang Vieng tourist.  We sat outside in the glorious tropical balmy weather and shared a Beer Lao while perusing the menu. We couldn’t help but admire the food of the handful of other diners, who were boring people like us. 

A couple of meters in front of us and a little lower was one of the tables so common in SE Asia – concrete with a chess board embedded in its centre.  We were hardly expecting a Fischer-Karpov standoff but wondered whether a couple of locals might exchange pawns, tussle over queens or play draughts.  To our surprise, a couple of locals did occupy the table but they played a different game.  A dog, a pallid small to medium-sized female specimen, nice enough but not particularly attractive to us, at least, hopped up on the table and planted her rear firmly on the board.  Then, from some unknown whereabouts came another dog that also jumped onto the table.  He decided, after a bit of sniffing and a little bit of tongue-play, that there was indeed a game to play and after this minimum of foreplay promptly mounted the female. We said, with all the dignity we could muster, “is this the entertainment we expect over a romantic meal in Vang Vieng?”  Surprisingly, for dogs, after a few forceful thrusts it all ended as abruptly as it started, the termination coinciding with the arrival of our spectacular fresh spring rolls.  Did one dog say to the other “this is not the appropriate time and place for shagging; there are guests from overseas about to eat”?

We will never know but the dogs seem to sum up Vang Vieng.  We walked back to our guest house passing any number of scantily clad tourists who were invariably overweight and rather unattractive compared to the locals, incentive enough you would think to cover up.  That’s assuming, of course, that they were roughly conscious. But the sight of someone falling legless into the potted plants at our guest house indicated that consciousness was a state for uncool touring cyclists like us.

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