The Wanderlust voyages of a Laura: Vang Vieng: An (admittedly biased) introduction

Vang Vieng is a very small Lao town about halfway between Luang Prabang and the capital city of Vientiane. Many years ago, a trickle of backpackers came here to check out the beautiful landscape and quiet way of life. The Nam Ou River runs through here, weaving between breathtaking limestone karsts teeming with incredible caves, and cattle grazing in open fields. A popular way to take in all this scenery was to get yourself an inner tube and float lazily down the river for hours. Somehow, over the last few years, this activity has exploded in popularity, attracting a new breed of backpacker and shaping the atmosphere of the tubing scene as well as the entire town of Vang Vieng into something decidedly less tranquil. Maybe the most obvious symbol of the new influence here is the multitude of identical bars/restaurants with large screen televisions playing non-stop episodes of American television shows. Most places play the show Friends, but there are a handful that play Family Guy. I did see one that was playing Jackass. Great representations of western culture. The majority of these places also have a "special menu" where you can order shakes/pizza/brownies containing weed, shrooms, or opium. You can also get little balloons filled with nitrous oxide if that's your pleasure. Meth is also readily available in town, though I didn't see it openly advertised like everything else. Oh, and this is all absolutely illegal in Laos, by the way. However, with the amount of money that's made on this stuff from young foreigners flooding into town, it's no wonder the authorities turn a blind eye. The main attraction for the majority of foreigners who come here is the tubing scene. Despite it's quiet beginings, tubing has now become an all-out party scene, complete with riverside bars handing out free shots of lao-lao (Lao whiskey), ziplines, slides, and jumping platforms into the river (which contribute to the deaths of several tubers every year), and loud pumping beats from sunrise to sunset. Despite the very modest Lao culture, many foreigners wander the streets shirtless or in bikinis, their bodies covered in fluorescent paint and mud. Some might call this an amazing party haven. Others, a sad transformation from bucolic paradise to filthy backpacker slum. I think it's probably horribly obvious what my opinion is, for I never was good at being objective. What a terrible journalist I'd make... In any case, there are definitely two sides to this argument. Some would say the huge influx of backpackers has helped to boost the local economy, that the locals are just giving the backpackers what they want, and thus turning a profit. Some might counter that the local culture is being destroyed and there are better ways to help the local economy without leaving a toxic footprint...you decide. For me, I decided to completely avoid the tubing scene and take in Vang Vieng in another way--rock climbing and spelunking! And getting violently ill for a couple of days...but that was an accident. Wooooops. (stop freaking out mom, I'm FINE now) Just a note, the last 3 pictures were not taken by me. I found them on the googles.