The Wanderlust voyages of a Laura: Climbing Vang Vieng

The main reason I headed for Vang Vieng was for the rock climbing. With all the limestone karst that's about, Vang Vieng is probably the best place for climbing in Laos. Rock climbing is a fairly new phenomenon in this country--you won't see many locals partaking. In fact, they'll probably shake their heads and think you're just another crazy foreigner. However, lucky for me, one local decided to open his own rock climbing school in Vang Vieng (after 9 years of climbing and leading tours in Thailand and France), so I signed up for the 3 day course, which included some top rope climbing, but even more exciting was learning how to lead climb! It doesn't really matter what that means, it's just a different climbing technique that I was excited to learn. Yaaaay for me. My instructor was named Apple. That's not his real name, but his real name actually does translate to "apple" in English. According to him, Lao people are often named after fruits. And animals! Some people are even named "cow". But not dog. Never dog. Anyway...my first 2 days of climbing were awesome (all the climbing I did was at "Sleeping Wall"), except that I attempted to climb a route named "Barack Obama" and failed. The Canadian girl I was climbing with succeeded. How humiliating. As the only American climber that day, I felt a deep and growing sense of shame. I decided to take a day off before my third and final day to let my muscles rest a bit. Unfortunately, my 1 day off turned into 4 days off because I got pretty ill and had to stay in bed for a while (bad food? bad water? Who knows). I was feeling a little weak on my last day of climbing after lying in bed and eating crackers for 3 days, but I gave it my all. And guess what? I climbed Barack Obama!! USA! USA!

Day one: top rope climbing

I don't know why they named it this, but hey, works for me.

Falling off of Barack Obama. In my defense, it was the last climb of a very long, exhausting day.

This is Kailin, the Canadian girl I climbed with on the first day. At lunch she showed me a nearby grove of grapefruits and we feasted like queens while discussing liberal politics. Yay liberals! Yay grapefruit!