Vang Vieng Rock City 2: Rock Harder

Currently I write this while cruising in a taxi, with the glare of the sun upon me I might make a few extra typos in the first portion of this, so please give me your leniency!

So, the morning after my caving and kayaking trek, I met up with Evan to get breakfast. Another well-documented phenomenon about Vang Vieng is its ample restaurants aimed entirely at Westerners that have tons of televisions set up, upon which they show endless reruns of Friends. There’s a couple of restaurants that decide to mix it up with some Simpsons, and I saw one showing Family Guy.

Vang Vieng Rock City

So, Vang Vieng. This place needs a bit of an introduction. Ten years ago, it was on no one’s radar. Something changed. It got listed in Lonely Planet, for one reason and one reason only: tubing.

Fleeting Moments in Vientiane

So, first things first on this morning, I visited JoMo Cafe for some more bread eggs and bacon, and coffee, then I hopped straight onto a bus to go to Vientiane. It was a pretty good sized bus, and truth be told, the ride was super uneventful. In fact, my entire entry about Vientiane is going to be pretty short, as I didn’t do very much at all.

Tour de Luang Prabang

Picking up right where we left, off, a boatload of people and I had just landed at the river docks of the UNESCO World Heritage site of the town Luang Prabang, which is a sleepy town lying at the confluence of two rivers, one being the Mekong River, and has a ton of old school French colonial style architecture, particularly in the area designated as that heritage site. We weren’t there for more than thirty seconds before touts started trying to grab us to take back to whatever guesthouse they worked for.

All Hands Off Deck

So, I woke up on a quiet early Friday morning for my last bit of time in Thailand. I had already packed up the night before, so I was ready to go. I shifted to the front of the guesthouse balcony, took the pictures that I posted of the river in the previous blog post, and waited. I got up extra early, but not too terribly much so... soon enough, though, the other people who had booked this same boat showed up. From this guesthouse, there was three people. One was an older lady named Julia, from the UK, and then two younger guys, one named Kristian (also from the UK) and the other named Mark, from Switzerland.

The four of us were put on a tuk tuk and taken to a place to get photos taken to be ready for the on the spot Lao visas we’d be getting in a short time from now. I started getting to know the three of these people at that point, but only in a very casual way. It was still too early to really get to know a person. I’ll have none of that until after noon, thanks.

Three Visa-on-Entry's in 16 hours.

My days in Thailand were numbered. I headed north, to the town of Chiang Rai. I was only going to be there a day, then move on to Myanmar/Burma if it was possible. Nothing’s ever certain with Burma, so I wasn’t staking my entire travel plans on it, but I made my way up there anyhow.

Two More Days in Chiang Mai

So I woke up the next day, and got ready to do . . . something. Actually, this was set to be a good day. I had a few things planned for the day. The first of them was to go to a nearby temple on a mountain top, with my new friend Hannah. This temple is called Doi Suthep, and you really have to take a saengthaew (the name of special pickup truck taxis in Thailand) to get to it.