After traversing the long and winding road from Luang Prabang to Vang Vieng, Laos, we finally reached our destination with an hour or two to spare before dinner.
Vang Vieng is a province of Laos that's known for its sporty activity stuffs like cave tubing/trekking, kayaking, waterfall/lagoon jumping, and in my case.. watching the Superbowl at 6:30am from my hotel room with Southeast Asian broadcasters speaking over the still-audible American broadcast.
While I will remember it for all of those things, I won't forget the incredible pineapple/Tiger Lao whiskey smoothies from one of the street stands we came across whilst strolling around town.. I just wish I could somehow import that lady and her fruit stand back to NY. The strange thing is that there were similar stands selling fruit smoothies and crepes with fruit/nutella/etc just about every ten feet on these streets.. except this lady happened to be the only one we saw in the entire province to offer the fruit smoothies mixed with liquor.. for 15-20,000 Lao kip.. or about $2-2.50 USD. I did later convince another stand at the Blue Lagoon to mix some Tiger Lao whiskey into my pineapple smoothie, but they were very confused at my request and it took me a few minutes to get them to understand what I wanted.. so putting liquor into fruit smoothies may not be so common in these parts.. but wow, are they fantastic. While the Lao whiskey is great, the fruit in SE Asia is so much more fresh and tasty than in the states because of the tropical climate.. and that just makes a world of difference.
Dinner for our first night in Vang Vieng would be at Kangaroo Bar, an Aussie bar that opened a number of months ago to a warm reception. It really reminds me of a classic dive bar in NY, with some table seating for dinner, a small area for awkward white-folk dancing, and a beer pong table right up front. The difference is that everything is dirt cheap here, the weather is beautiful, and the bar is fairly open.. there's no door or anything like that - it's wide open to the [dirt] street outside, and patrons are hanging out inside, outside, and all around.
The Aussie bartenders/waiters worked along with a few locals to provide some of the better restaurant service we would receive in Laos since there wasn't a language barrier. FTT, the Aussie guys, and I had mostly been eating local food for the past week, but there were some compelling western items on this menu that I, and a few others in the group, simply couldn't pass up.
I'm not typically a burger guy (save for the occasional stop at Shake Shack or In n Out), but they highly recommended the Beerlao burger as their specialty, so I gave that a shot and was very impressed - the flavor with the Beerlao cooked in there was very tasty, and it was also cooked just right. This burger would've easily been enough for a meal on its own, but some of the Toronto girls (Vanessa, Lauren) spotted a Canadian delicacy on the menu that we just had to check out: POUTINE.
For those of you who know me well.. you know that there are few food-related items that bring me more sheer joy than gravy. From turkey with gravy on Thanksgiving, to late-night curly fries with gravy at the diner growing up, to McDonald's nuggets with KFC gravy in Penn Station, to well.. wherever gravy can be found - there are few loves in my life that are quite like gravy. So here we are.. in Vang Vieng, Laos.. at an Aussie bar - and they have poutine! (Poutine is what Canada likes to call french fries smothered in gravy and melted cheese curds.. so clearly I get it without the curds) .. but hold on - we're in Laos, at an Aussie bar - how good could poutine possibly be? Welp.. it was pretty dang good. Overall, it was a great showing from the chefs at Kangaroo Bar. The next day would be an extremely long one, with the Superbowl starting at 6:30am, and our departure for cave tubing at 8am.. so it would be an early night after dinner.
I've already posted the details of my experience with one of the most anticlimactic Superbowls in recent memory, so there's no need to delve any further into that - but what saved me from watching the whole game and leaving at the half was our plan to go cave tubing and kayaking for the entire morning, into the early afternoon.
It's a little funny because when I booked this trip, I knew I had very little flexibility with my travel dates, as my coworker and his fiancée would be away the entire month of February.. so I had no choice but to book something that would likely cause me to miss the Superbowl (Feb 3) for the first time in probably 25 years. Then when I found out we'd be in Vang Vieng, in a hotel room with a TV and I could wake up at 6:30am to watch it, I was thrilled. However, with the actual game being a complete waste of time after the first few minutes, leaving halfway through for a day of adventures was the best possible way to proceed at around 8am, Laos time.
We all meet outside to take a couple of tuk tuks to our cave destination, but there's somehow not enough room inside of the tuk tuks to fit everyone - so I bravely volunteer to ride on the platform in the back of our tuk tuk.. and boy, was that fun. I hang onto a bar along the roof and remain standing for the entire 20 minute ride.. and it was awesome. I felt like a commando on the back of a Hummer, minus the automatic weapon.
During my exciting tuk tuk expedition to the cave tubing site, I noticed that some of the bartenders from the Aussie bar from the previous night were riding alongside us in their Wrangler. I thought, that's strange - maybe they're coming with? It turns out that one of them was a big fan of Ashleigh, and they decided to not only join us for the day's adventures, but to sprinkle in a little debauchery as well. It's also possible that they wanted to do some tubing and kayaking for the day anyhow, and taking in some hard liquor and nitrus before the clock strikes 10 in the AM is just how they roll.. but more on that in a moment.
Cave tubing is a pretty unique experience. To start things off, they give you a headband with a bright light attached to it because, well.. caves can be pretty dark. Then we strip down to our bathing suits (the Aussies call these "swimmers," and they call sunglasses "sunnies" - so many nicknames to remember), and head into our tubes. The tubes are the same ones from any water park.. think Lazy River - black, shaped like a doughnut, and filled with air. We hop into our respective tubes and get into the water towards the cave, which is about 20 feet away, and we each grab and pull ourselves by the rope which lines the path for our excursion.
The water is fairly cold and the cave dark, but the inside of it is really something else. It's really cool and exciting to be somewhere so remote.. in a cave.. in water.. pulling ourselves along with a light and a rope as our guide. I'm not sure how well I would've done as a cave man in ancient times, but I guess I can say I do rather enjoy caves. Even though the water wasn't comfortably warm and there were parts of the cave where the rock formations were fairly low and on the sharper side (poor Ashleigh hurt her foot), it was a very calming, yet thrilling experience.. if that makes sense. And so we navigated through the cave, took some photos, and turned back.. and then the real fun started.
As we're getting out of the water, it's probably only 9:30am, so the sun hasn't fully risen yet and we're all quite cold.. but fear not - the Aussie bar folk are here to warm us up. They're already carrying on with a bottle of Captain Morgan Black and some sort of contraption that appears to be filling balloons with air - and it doesn't seem like they're doing this to make us a family of balloon animals.. or a bicycle, clown. If I thought my first tuk tuk ride of the day was fun, the second ride would put that to shame.
We depart the cave tubing site and head towards the kayaking location, and it's going to be about a 20 minute ride. Somehow we end up in what I'll call the party tuk tuk with some of the fun folks in our crew, plus one of the local Laotians from the Aussie bar. What makes our tuk tuk slightly different from the average tuk tuk is the huge subwoofer in the front, facing out.. there's that, the party music blasting, and also the guy from the Aussie bar passing around the rum, balloons, and that fancy balloon-filling contraption for when supply simply couldn't meet demand. The good news is that at this point, it's almost 10am.. so therefore, it's almost certainly 5 o'clock somewhere.
We arrive at the kayaking location, fired up from our party tuk tuk and ready to do some kayaking. There are only three solo kayaks, and I wanted the extra workout, so I fought along with Toronto/Ginger Lauren and Marco to get my own, which I'd never done before - I'd only ridden in a two seater.. and it was a great call. It was not only fun, but a fairly decent workout.. and the river was pretty serene and beautiful. As we were told, this stretch of river was formerly famous for bar hopping, where people in boats/kayaks/etc. would stop off at numerous bars on the side of river throughout their trip.. but apparently something bad happened (I can't imagine what that could've been.. booze+boats=?) and they closed off the areas at these bars where people could pull up and leave their boats/kayaks/etc. However, we were already "sorted" (great Aussie term.. also sometimes spoken as "sorted out") from our party tuk tuk, and so the absence of river pub crawl probably wasn't such a bad thing.
The kayaking tour lasted for about two hours, which included two brief stops along the way for folks to relieve themselves and such.. and then we pulled the kayaks in just a few minutes by foot to our hotel.. just in time for one more fantastic red curry chicken at the hotel restaurant, where the service was unsurprisingly bad, but the food was surprisingly good.
After eating and recharging our batteries for a few, we wanted to keep the day of fun outdoor activities going, so we decided to follow the advice of our tour manager and check out the Blue Lagoon, which was described to us as a fun place to swim, hike, hang out, etc. About seven of us liked the idea, and then I convinced everyone that we should take a road smoothie in case we get thirsty along the way.. so I directed the tuk tuk to our favorite smoothie lady with the Tiger whiskey/pineapple and other wonderful smoothies, and we ventured off to the Blue Lagoon for a really fun afternoon.
Our drive through rural Vang Vieng was a bit eye-opening.. the area was extremely poor and lined with shacks and dirt roads, in contrast to the part we were staying in which was a bit more developed.. but there was a beautiful stop at the end, and that was the Blue Lagoon.
When we walk in, the first thing we see is a clear, little blue body of water with some people swimming, and others swinging/jumping off a tall, massive tree which hangs directly over the lagoon. There are also areas to sit in the shade and in the sun, a couple of folks playing soccer and volleyball. All in all, people seem to be having a really great time.
Before we got involved in the lagoon itself, Frank had learned of a cave hike we could do, so a few of us went to check that out. I was just wearing my reefs sandals, so I wasn't exactly in ideal cave-trekking gear, but the reefs served me surprisingly well this time around. Just as with cave tubing, we rented headband lights for the trek, and it's a good thing we did - there's no way we would've made it past the first part of the cave without them.
The walk up the steps to the cave was a bit long and slightly treacherous, which served as a preview for the rest of the hike - it was really challenging and a little unnerving at points, but it was a lot of fun and I'm very glad we did it. After we made it through the initial, well-lit portion of the cave, half of our party turned back, but Frank, Aussie Kate, and I trekked along through the darkness.. and that's when things really got interesting. It's one thing to be walking on a street or through a field in nearly complete darkness, but it's quite another to be hiking through a cave.. and there's no way we could've navigated through this portion of it without our headband lights.
Being a nimble (even in reefs), fairly good climber paid serious dividends on this hike. There were some areas that were a little flat, and we were able to walk for a minute or two, but the majority of this trek would be spent climbing up, down, and around rock formations throughout the cave. The inside of the cave, while dark, was pretty amazing to look at.. and luckily, our trek to the end of the cave and back, which easily lasted a half hour, ended with a lot of great photos and without any injuries.
We hiked back down the extremely steep and scary steps and off to the Blue Lagoon, where our other mates were waiting for us to start swimming, swinging, and jumping off of the tremendous tree hanging over the lagoon. There was one branch that was maybe ten feet high, then another that must've been 25 feet high.. plus a rope attached to the lower branch that was used to swing into the water. The Aussies and Frank all checked out the high branch and jumped off, but I was far more interested in the rope swinging into the water.. so I asked Nick to be my photographer for the event.
It turns out that it's not easy to catch someone moving quickly for an action shot with my waterproof camera (I didn't bring my dSLR for this excursion because of the hiking/water).. and while the shot Nick took was decent, I wanted more.. so I decided to do what any sane person these days would do in this situation: "Lemme take a selfie." (the song was released after the trip ended, but falling behind with these posts and finishing them weeks later, it was too appropriate to leave out).
The logistics were a little tough, because I had to hold onto the rope tightly enough to support my body weight with my right hand so I wouldn't fall into the water too soon, but I also had to be steady enough with the waterproof camera strapped to my left wrist to take a decent selfie with my left hand. What resulted from this stunt was nothing short of incredible. Not only did I luckily get a phenomenal action photo of myself swinging above the lagoon, but I somehow managed to capture Nick and Damon watching intently towards my acrobatic water-bound selfie in the background. If when all is said and done, this is the best action selfie I've ever taken.. I think I can be satisfied with that.
We would swing, swim, and jump for a bit longer, and then decide to head back for dinner.. but not before I convince some folks working at a smoothie stand to put Tiger Whiskey into our smoothies. As I mentioned earlier, they found this idea very confusing at first, but they finally did come through after some coaching. It was a great excursion, a great trip back.. and most importantly.. Vang Vieng was a blast from beginning to end.
Vang Vieng is a province of Laos that's known for its sporty activity stuffs like cave tubing/trekking, kayaking, waterfall/lagoon jumping, and in my case.. watching the Superbowl at 6:30am from my hotel room with Southeast Asian broadcasters speaking over the still-audible American broadcast.
While I will remember it for all of those things, I won't forget the incredible pineapple/Tiger Lao whiskey smoothies from one of the street stands we came across whilst strolling around town.. I just wish I could somehow import that lady and her fruit stand back to NY. The strange thing is that there were similar stands selling fruit smoothies and crepes with fruit/nutella/etc just about every ten feet on these streets.. except this lady happened to be the only one we saw in the entire province to offer the fruit smoothies mixed with liquor.. for 15-20,000 Lao kip.. or about $2-2.50 USD. I did later convince another stand at the Blue Lagoon to mix some Tiger Lao whiskey into my pineapple smoothie, but they were very confused at my request and it took me a few minutes to get them to understand what I wanted.. so putting liquor into fruit smoothies may not be so common in these parts.. but wow, are they fantastic. While the Lao whiskey is great, the fruit in SE Asia is so much more fresh and tasty than in the states because of the tropical climate.. and that just makes a world of difference.
Dinner for our first night in Vang Vieng would be at Kangaroo Bar, an Aussie bar that opened a number of months ago to a warm reception. It really reminds me of a classic dive bar in NY, with some table seating for dinner, a small area for awkward white-folk dancing, and a beer pong table right up front. The difference is that everything is dirt cheap here, the weather is beautiful, and the bar is fairly open.. there's no door or anything like that - it's wide open to the [dirt] street outside, and patrons are hanging out inside, outside, and all around.
The Aussie bartenders/waiters worked along with a few locals to provide some of the better restaurant service we would receive in Laos since there wasn't a language barrier. FTT, the Aussie guys, and I had mostly been eating local food for the past week, but there were some compelling western items on this menu that I, and a few others in the group, simply couldn't pass up.
I'm not typically a burger guy (save for the occasional stop at Shake Shack or In n Out), but they highly recommended the Beerlao burger as their specialty, so I gave that a shot and was very impressed - the flavor with the Beerlao cooked in there was very tasty, and it was also cooked just right. This burger would've easily been enough for a meal on its own, but some of the Toronto girls (Vanessa, Lauren) spotted a Canadian delicacy on the menu that we just had to check out: POUTINE.
For those of you who know me well.. you know that there are few food-related items that bring me more sheer joy than gravy. From turkey with gravy on Thanksgiving, to late-night curly fries with gravy at the diner growing up, to McDonald's nuggets with KFC gravy in Penn Station, to well.. wherever gravy can be found - there are few loves in my life that are quite like gravy. So here we are.. in Vang Vieng, Laos.. at an Aussie bar - and they have poutine! (Poutine is what Canada likes to call french fries smothered in gravy and melted cheese curds.. so clearly I get it without the curds) .. but hold on - we're in Laos, at an Aussie bar - how good could poutine possibly be? Welp.. it was pretty dang good. Overall, it was a great showing from the chefs at Kangaroo Bar. The next day would be an extremely long one, with the Superbowl starting at 6:30am, and our departure for cave tubing at 8am.. so it would be an early night after dinner.
I've already posted the details of my experience with one of the most anticlimactic Superbowls in recent memory, so there's no need to delve any further into that - but what saved me from watching the whole game and leaving at the half was our plan to go cave tubing and kayaking for the entire morning, into the early afternoon.
It's a little funny because when I booked this trip, I knew I had very little flexibility with my travel dates, as my coworker and his fiancée would be away the entire month of February.. so I had no choice but to book something that would likely cause me to miss the Superbowl (Feb 3) for the first time in probably 25 years. Then when I found out we'd be in Vang Vieng, in a hotel room with a TV and I could wake up at 6:30am to watch it, I was thrilled. However, with the actual game being a complete waste of time after the first few minutes, leaving halfway through for a day of adventures was the best possible way to proceed at around 8am, Laos time.
We all meet outside to take a couple of tuk tuks to our cave destination, but there's somehow not enough room inside of the tuk tuks to fit everyone - so I bravely volunteer to ride on the platform in the back of our tuk tuk.. and boy, was that fun. I hang onto a bar along the roof and remain standing for the entire 20 minute ride.. and it was awesome. I felt like a commando on the back of a Hummer, minus the automatic weapon.
During my exciting tuk tuk expedition to the cave tubing site, I noticed that some of the bartenders from the Aussie bar from the previous night were riding alongside us in their Wrangler. I thought, that's strange - maybe they're coming with? It turns out that one of them was a big fan of Ashleigh, and they decided to not only join us for the day's adventures, but to sprinkle in a little debauchery as well. It's also possible that they wanted to do some tubing and kayaking for the day anyhow, and taking in some hard liquor and nitrus before the clock strikes 10 in the AM is just how they roll.. but more on that in a moment.
Cave tubing is a pretty unique experience. To start things off, they give you a headband with a bright light attached to it because, well.. caves can be pretty dark. Then we strip down to our bathing suits (the Aussies call these "swimmers," and they call sunglasses "sunnies" - so many nicknames to remember), and head into our tubes. The tubes are the same ones from any water park.. think Lazy River - black, shaped like a doughnut, and filled with air. We hop into our respective tubes and get into the water towards the cave, which is about 20 feet away, and we each grab and pull ourselves by the rope which lines the path for our excursion.
The water is fairly cold and the cave dark, but the inside of it is really something else. It's really cool and exciting to be somewhere so remote.. in a cave.. in water.. pulling ourselves along with a light and a rope as our guide. I'm not sure how well I would've done as a cave man in ancient times, but I guess I can say I do rather enjoy caves. Even though the water wasn't comfortably warm and there were parts of the cave where the rock formations were fairly low and on the sharper side (poor Ashleigh hurt her foot), it was a very calming, yet thrilling experience.. if that makes sense. And so we navigated through the cave, took some photos, and turned back.. and then the real fun started.
As we're getting out of the water, it's probably only 9:30am, so the sun hasn't fully risen yet and we're all quite cold.. but fear not - the Aussie bar folk are here to warm us up. They're already carrying on with a bottle of Captain Morgan Black and some sort of contraption that appears to be filling balloons with air - and it doesn't seem like they're doing this to make us a family of balloon animals.. or a bicycle, clown. If I thought my first tuk tuk ride of the day was fun, the second ride would put that to shame.
We depart the cave tubing site and head towards the kayaking location, and it's going to be about a 20 minute ride. Somehow we end up in what I'll call the party tuk tuk with some of the fun folks in our crew, plus one of the local Laotians from the Aussie bar. What makes our tuk tuk slightly different from the average tuk tuk is the huge subwoofer in the front, facing out.. there's that, the party music blasting, and also the guy from the Aussie bar passing around the rum, balloons, and that fancy balloon-filling contraption for when supply simply couldn't meet demand. The good news is that at this point, it's almost 10am.. so therefore, it's almost certainly 5 o'clock somewhere.
We arrive at the kayaking location, fired up from our party tuk tuk and ready to do some kayaking. There are only three solo kayaks, and I wanted the extra workout, so I fought along with Toronto/Ginger Lauren and Marco to get my own, which I'd never done before - I'd only ridden in a two seater.. and it was a great call. It was not only fun, but a fairly decent workout.. and the river was pretty serene and beautiful. As we were told, this stretch of river was formerly famous for bar hopping, where people in boats/kayaks/etc. would stop off at numerous bars on the side of river throughout their trip.. but apparently something bad happened (I can't imagine what that could've been.. booze+boats=?) and they closed off the areas at these bars where people could pull up and leave their boats/kayaks/etc. However, we were already "sorted" (great Aussie term.. also sometimes spoken as "sorted out") from our party tuk tuk, and so the absence of river pub crawl probably wasn't such a bad thing.
The kayaking tour lasted for about two hours, which included two brief stops along the way for folks to relieve themselves and such.. and then we pulled the kayaks in just a few minutes by foot to our hotel.. just in time for one more fantastic red curry chicken at the hotel restaurant, where the service was unsurprisingly bad, but the food was surprisingly good.
After eating and recharging our batteries for a few, we wanted to keep the day of fun outdoor activities going, so we decided to follow the advice of our tour manager and check out the Blue Lagoon, which was described to us as a fun place to swim, hike, hang out, etc. About seven of us liked the idea, and then I convinced everyone that we should take a road smoothie in case we get thirsty along the way.. so I directed the tuk tuk to our favorite smoothie lady with the Tiger whiskey/pineapple and other wonderful smoothies, and we ventured off to the Blue Lagoon for a really fun afternoon.
Our drive through rural Vang Vieng was a bit eye-opening.. the area was extremely poor and lined with shacks and dirt roads, in contrast to the part we were staying in which was a bit more developed.. but there was a beautiful stop at the end, and that was the Blue Lagoon.
When we walk in, the first thing we see is a clear, little blue body of water with some people swimming, and others swinging/jumping off a tall, massive tree which hangs directly over the lagoon. There are also areas to sit in the shade and in the sun, a couple of folks playing soccer and volleyball. All in all, people seem to be having a really great time.
Before we got involved in the lagoon itself, Frank had learned of a cave hike we could do, so a few of us went to check that out. I was just wearing my reefs sandals, so I wasn't exactly in ideal cave-trekking gear, but the reefs served me surprisingly well this time around. Just as with cave tubing, we rented headband lights for the trek, and it's a good thing we did - there's no way we would've made it past the first part of the cave without them.
The walk up the steps to the cave was a bit long and slightly treacherous, which served as a preview for the rest of the hike - it was really challenging and a little unnerving at points, but it was a lot of fun and I'm very glad we did it. After we made it through the initial, well-lit portion of the cave, half of our party turned back, but Frank, Aussie Kate, and I trekked along through the darkness.. and that's when things really got interesting. It's one thing to be walking on a street or through a field in nearly complete darkness, but it's quite another to be hiking through a cave.. and there's no way we could've navigated through this portion of it without our headband lights.
Being a nimble (even in reefs), fairly good climber paid serious dividends on this hike. There were some areas that were a little flat, and we were able to walk for a minute or two, but the majority of this trek would be spent climbing up, down, and around rock formations throughout the cave. The inside of the cave, while dark, was pretty amazing to look at.. and luckily, our trek to the end of the cave and back, which easily lasted a half hour, ended with a lot of great photos and without any injuries.
We hiked back down the extremely steep and scary steps and off to the Blue Lagoon, where our other mates were waiting for us to start swimming, swinging, and jumping off of the tremendous tree hanging over the lagoon. There was one branch that was maybe ten feet high, then another that must've been 25 feet high.. plus a rope attached to the lower branch that was used to swing into the water. The Aussies and Frank all checked out the high branch and jumped off, but I was far more interested in the rope swinging into the water.. so I asked Nick to be my photographer for the event.
It turns out that it's not easy to catch someone moving quickly for an action shot with my waterproof camera (I didn't bring my dSLR for this excursion because of the hiking/water).. and while the shot Nick took was decent, I wanted more.. so I decided to do what any sane person these days would do in this situation: "Lemme take a selfie." (the song was released after the trip ended, but falling behind with these posts and finishing them weeks later, it was too appropriate to leave out).
The logistics were a little tough, because I had to hold onto the rope tightly enough to support my body weight with my right hand so I wouldn't fall into the water too soon, but I also had to be steady enough with the waterproof camera strapped to my left wrist to take a decent selfie with my left hand. What resulted from this stunt was nothing short of incredible. Not only did I luckily get a phenomenal action photo of myself swinging above the lagoon, but I somehow managed to capture Nick and Damon watching intently towards my acrobatic water-bound selfie in the background. If when all is said and done, this is the best action selfie I've ever taken.. I think I can be satisfied with that.
We would swing, swim, and jump for a bit longer, and then decide to head back for dinner.. but not before I convince some folks working at a smoothie stand to put Tiger Whiskey into our smoothies. As I mentioned earlier, they found this idea very confusing at first, but they finally did come through after some coaching. It was a great excursion, a great trip back.. and most importantly.. Vang Vieng was a blast from beginning to end.
