I returned from the beach sunned, and with the souvenir of a sea urchin fragment embedded in my foot. With the final weekend of vacation in January, I visited somewhere new, but much closer to home: Vang Vieng.
Vang Vieng is at once a notorious and beloved tourist destination. After Luang Prabang, it is probably the most well-known and popular location for visitors to Laos. It is both known for its stunning landscape–with craggy karst mountains overlooking the Nam Song River–and its hard-partying-anything-goes reputation. For years, Vang Vieng has been a magnet for drunk Aussies on spring break (to be stereotypical against someone other than Americans for once…although all nationalities partake in the debauchery). It’s known as the place where you can drunk buckets of cheap local liquor, enjoy “happy shakes” spiked with your opiate of choice, and float/jump/frolic intoxicated in the Nam Song River. It’s a double-edged sword: it provides a good livelihood for enterprising locals in tourism, however, at its worst the debauchery is both disrespectful and dangerous.
During the ASEM cleanup, bars along the river were torn down, and a curfew enforced, and by the time I visited Vang Vieng in January, this cleaner face of the town was still preserved. I had passed through Vang Vieng very briefly in 2011 on my motorbike expedition north, but barely saw anything of the town. However, in the few hours I was outside getting dinner I clearly remember hoardes of noisy tourists in frat tanks and booty shorts walking barefoot in the roads sporting lewd day-glo body paint and Sharpie scribblings on their body.
The Vang Vieng after dark this time was starkly different. The streets were relatively quiet and fairly deserted, more like Vientiane or Luang Prabang, and the TVs in the Friends cafes (every other business is a restaurant with comfortable cushions and reruns of the sitcom playing on a flatscreen) and Top 40 music at bars faded by midnight.
While this version of Laos’ hedonist haven seemed much more pleasant (I was thankful not to have to watch half-naked falang spilling french fries), many vendors and bar owners bemoaned the fact that it was supposedly “high season” but certainly didn’t seem like it…and that they were forbidden from continuing to sell their liquor buckets. Supposedly the river tubing experience has also calmed, although I have yet to try it myself. It’s unclear how permanent the change is–things here often go in waves of strictness and relative laxity. But hopefully in the end, some sort of happy medium will be reached, which restores the tourism and fun, but with a higher degree of safety and respect.
Vang Vieng isn’t just for frolicking falang, it’s also a popular tourist destination for locals, as it’s only a 3-5 hour bus ride from Vientiane, and offers a spectrum of pleasant outdoor activities. Waterfalls, swimming holes, and caves abound to be explored.
In my short two day visit, I wandered around town, enjoying how relaxed and walkable it is, and strolled the stunning riverside. I headed out of town to one of the caves, which was surrounded by a well-kept park filled picnicking families and Thai tour groups. Finally, I made sure to catch a couple episodes of Friends on a couch, and feel unabashedly touristy for a few hours.