It’s a Friday afternoon in Vang Vieng, Laos, but for all my friend Carter and I know, we could be back in an American college dorm.
Everywhere in town, backpackers are vegging out in tin-roofed cafés, having had their fill of happy pizzas and special shakes, content to while away a few hours in front of the TV. And every café’s TV plays the same thing – endless re-runs of Family Guy and Friends.
This little town has quite the reputation. Set on the Nam Song River, Vang Vieng seems like a natural hub for outdoor activities such as kayaking and tubing. But combine that with riverside bars offering free shots of Lao-Lao whisky along the way, and you start attracting a different crowd – as evidenced by the rows of cafés that Carter and I keep passing.
But the hills surrounding Vang Vieng – jagged karst peaks that pierce the sky – they speak of something different. They lure us away from the town’s sleepy main streets, past the local high school kids cycling beneath their upright umbrellas, to where the world is suddenly just hills and river – a little more open, and a little more pure.
We are determined to get lost, to go beyond, to get a closer glimpse of those hills.
A rickety bridge leads us across the river to dirt roads leading nowhere. We walk until Carter casually mentions we don’t seem to be getting anywhere fast, and then we turn around and re-trace our steps in the opposite direction. Our legs, sore from an 18-hour journey from Bangkok, have never been happier.
We walk back across the bridge and over another to Saysong Island, nothing but a little strip of sea grass and brush between the river’s two shorelines. From our perch at a café at the end of the island, life unfolds around us. Visiting monks pass in narrow wooden boats, their saffron robes striking against the pale blue water; tubers begin to reach their ending point.
In total, we will spend some twenty hours in Vang Vieng – three alone here on Saysong Island, ordering round after round of delectable coconut shakes. And each time I reach the end of another shake, I am reminded of what it means to go beyond your initial encounter with a place. At first it can be all too easy to give up, to see Family Guy playing on ten TVs and get right back on the bus.
But if you’re patient, and persistent, sometimes there is hidden beauty to be found – beauty hidden in the hills.
LOVE that you have described this great little place not in ‘party central’ terms but in observations of life, the hills and the feeling and the sights. The reruns on TV in front of a bar are great for about 3 hours, but there is so much more to this place – starting with the setting! Glad you enjoyed.
Thanks for that, Gerald! I’ll be honest – it was hard at first to look behind the rows of restaurants all playing the same TV shows, but the hills won out soon enough 🙂 Overall, I was blown away by the landscape around Vang Vieng and actually wish I’d had more time there to explore it, either on foot or motorbike! One day, right?
This is why i’m so much more drawn to villages – i don’t want to share my space with partiers. i want something more serene and quiet. An undiscovered piece, if you will
and also i’d like a coconut shake.
You and me both, Babu! I love that we’re so enamored by villages in the same way 🙂 Undiscovered is the perfect word for it…while I’m realistic enough to know that chances are, someone else has been in a particular place before, I also still love to imagine that I’m the first one to stumble across it. I can’t wait to come exploring with you in Guernsey!
PS – The coconut shakes are to DIE for. Let’s go back to a Laotian village one day and do nothing but order shakes, okay?
There’s always something more, something worth seeking out amongst the tourist trappings. It’s important to keep an open mind, and I love how you managed to scratch the surface a little deeper, and find the hidden beauty – and you captured it in your inimitable way as usual. Beautiful work my dear 🙂
Thanks so much, Hannah! And you are so right – there’s always something to discover, no matter how discouraged we may be by a place at first. Thank you for the wonderful reminder 🙂
Beautiful post and photos Candace. I love finding the real and more authentic experiences in a place, especially in a place that has been changed (some might say ruined) by so much shallow tourism. It’s so crazy to me how few people leave the tourist track.
Thank you, my friend! And yes, I know you definitely understand what I’m talking about here 🙂 I just couldn’t believe what stunning scenery and laid-back local life existed just a few streets over from where all the backpackers congregated in Vang Vieng – but then I suppose that leaves all the more scenery for those of us who do try to waver from the tourist track!
I thought Vang Vieng was so beautiful – I couldn’t get enough of the karst mountains so close! I had many reservations about going, but, for many reasons, it was probably the highlight of my trip in Laos > http://www.thepaperplanesblog.com/moment-in-vang-vieng/
Yes! The karst hills were really something, weren’t they? I loved reading about your own moment in Vang Vieng, glad we were both able to move past our initial reservations 🙂