To party and have a good time in Vang Vienne, Laos 3/2023 (Stop 9)

3-4 March 2023  From Luang Prabang, I continued south to Vang Vieng in a new Chinese-built train, arriving in 2 hours.

I rented a motorbike and went looking for the famed blue water lagoons. I rode mostly on dusty dirt roads, through dry rice fields, surrounded by limestone mountains of irregular shapes. They looked like play dough hand-pressed by little children. They would have looked most stunning but for the hazy sky the past 3 days.

I eventually found the first lagoon (Lagoon 1). The water was turquoise and bluish, exactly how every girl wanted her gemstone to look. It was a small pool, so everyone crowded around, dipping into it, and staring at it like a sparkling gemstone on display. It was pretty but I couldn’t enjoy it in peace. I then went in search of “Lagoon 3”. This was far less crowded, tucked away under a karst mountain, in a rustic and idyllic surrounding. A small crowd, mainly Western youths, had it all to themselves.  

I went in search of a high point to see how this landscape looked from the top. So I rode about 20 minutes from town to climb the Pha Ngern “Silver Cliff” viewpoint. After a 45-minute climb, I reached the summit. It rose high above the brown fields below, perched high up on some sharp rocks. It was exhilarating, but my legs turned soft. The view should have been much better but the haze was almost a spoiler.   

Almost all the fun and partying revolved around the Nam Song River. A canoe for two paddled down the river, often caught between the rocks in the river. The paddlers were often seen standing in the middle of the river, scratching their heads, trying to extricate their canoes. Young people were seen floating in big tubes, beer bottles in their hands, carried by the flow down the river. It did not look like a serious river.

In the evening, young tourists crowded into the bars that spilled out into the streets, with bottles that never seemed to leave their hands. The party continued. They were in the prime of their youth. This was the place.

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