Cycing in Laos: vang vieng
December 2005
Cycling in Laos: Vang Veng in 2005
My best-ever day’s cycling through the mountains on Highway 13 ends abruptly when I hit Vang Vieng, that’s 55 kms at an average of 17.5 kph – not too bad considering the steep gradients. I had been warned about Vang Vieng with its pizza places and Sunday roast and discos and it’s true. Be prepared to not actually be in Laos! The main road into town is completely dug up such that it reminds me of Chaweng Beach on Samui which went through the same growing pains in the 1980s as unfettered development sped ahead of street infrastructure, leaving large pipes and wires protruding next to gaping holes all along the principal roads. I check into a guesthouse and decamp in my $3-a-night room before going for a walk.
I notice that everywhere people are lounging around on couches in cafés which are orientated towards TV screens. Bodies are sprawled out watching ‘Friends’ in the middle of the day. I thought that that was what you travelled for – to escape exactly that! It’s only when I discover the restaurants and guesthouses down by the river that I get it. I understand now what all these folks are doing hanging out here. The view over towards the mountains in the distance is great and the river, the Nam Song, adds to the idyll. There are bamboo hut affairs built over the river’s edge where you can lounge with your beer and watch the sun going down. The ‘Doors Greatest Hits’ wafts across the water and inexperienced kayakers slalom along and bump into the rickety bridge. Yes, I can see why this has become a kind of backpacker doss-stop. Sunset to ‘Riders on the Storm,’ – takes me back a bit!
The main drag is brightly lit in the evening: you can get a massage, there’s music, film, bopping, internet and banana pancakes which is what I settle on. Like most garish places, you just see the bits you want to see in the end, so Vang Vieng is a lot easier on the eye than when I first rode into town. But I can understand it generating antipathy, particularly for those on a ‘back in time’ adventure.
My guesthouse staff are almost reverential in their respectfulness, I can see that the Lao people are deferential to a person deemed to be of superior standing - I guess it is fairly Asian. I am familiar with it through work in both Thailand and Vietnam although it manifests itself in different ways, with the Vietnamese being much more assertive in a social context. I suspect that the Lao character is much nearer to that of Thais than Vietnamese. There’s a revealing quote from Norman Lewis about Laos, “Europeans who come here to live, soon acquire a certain recognisable manner. They develop quiet voices and gentle, rapt expressions.” I’ve seen that with farangs in Thailand too, those who really embrace the culture, especially those who learn Thai. Language really is culture-giving, and let’s face it, if you go to the great lengths that are required to become fluent in a language then it is likely that your fixation is no flirtation, but rather an obsession with every nuance of daily life. The Thais often remark that such people are 'more Thai than Thai' – sometimes this is said with admiration, sometimes with irritation. No-one likes a smarty, correcting them on minor cultural etiquette!
Next morning (off again) sees me skirting the man-made lake, Ang Nam Ngum, which is 250 square kilometres in area. The road has a high nuisance quotient in that it is undulating, mile after mile of up and down making it difficult to settle into any kind of rhythm. Long climbs are followed by shortish freewheels, thus making it tedious. The villages are still poor, but the children’s hair is washed – maybe that’s some sort of economic indicator. My first stop at a roadside shop after two hours sees me scrutinising the wares for something to eat. These convenience stores (shacks really) string up their wares so you see a streamer of single-use shampoo sachets like flypaper, ditto for one-shot washing powder. They sell cigarettes in ones and twos along with a match and bit of strike. I am delighted to discover that this place also sells lemon puffs in twos – I snaffle a brace with my Seven Up.
Whilst I am sitting there two lads come in with generous bright red lips – they are either examples of the Lao alternative sex or they have both eaten a raspberry lolly recently. They want the lady to put on a DVD or two, all the stores have racks of copied DVDs, they then spend ages selecting one. It turns out to be a scantily clad girl gyrating to local music. It makes for a strange scene as, quite unabashed, all three cast an expert eye over proceedings on the small screen before sheepishly grinning at me as I nearly spit out a mouthful of lemon puff. “Are you buying or what?” the lady demands (I am guessing here but it did sound rather harsh), they look at me to see what I think. I think it’s quite good but I haven’t seen the rest to be honest, so I don’t know whether to give a thumbs-up or shrug. I shrug. They shrug too so she abruptly pulls the plug on the show and puts the disk back in its wrapper with a huff – off they trudge. “Do you want to buy it?” she gestures, looking at me. I politely decline, chewing on my lemon puff. I’d make a mental note of its name just in case but the DVD cover is in Lao script.
Back on the road the countryside is completely littered with plastic bags, if you threw a metre quadrat you’d net four per frame, I bet. Many third world countries are quite recycle-conscious in that you don’t get a bottle or a can, you get what you want, even a liquid like soup, in a plastic bag with a straw sticking up through the elastic band at the top. So far so good, but it breaks down rather if the bag is then slung out of the window of the bus, and unfortunately that is the case here.
Checking in there’s not much to do in the one-horse town of Phu Hong. Actually, it hasn’t even got a horse. One bike town then. I will keep my one-bike in the room as a matter of habit, there's no point in waking up to find that someone has loaded it onto the back of a pick-up. At breakfast I ask for bread-butter-jam and am greeted with a nod which hides an ever-so slight frown. I get the impression that they don’t have to deal with this order too often – like the American asking for a Waldorf Salad in Fawlty Towers, I almost feel guilty as the kitchen staff are marshalled for a rearguard action. One is dispatched to the market to get a loaf of bread, another scurries over the road for a pot of jam. I am eventually proudly served, with my muddy coffee, a huge fresh loaf, an unopened jar of strawberry jam, a tub of ghee and a big oblong meat cleaver to spread it all with. I am humbled by the experience as all eyes watch how I use the cleaver, which is wider than the top of the tub, to get at the ghee that is unspreadable anyway. I slice the bread and wipe it in the ghee before spooning a gob of jam onto it. Everybody nods with satisfaction at my breakfast ingenuity. This keeps me absorbed anyway for a good half hour before asking for a doggy-bag for the rest of the loaf. In future, say ‘Memorable breakfasts?’ and Phu Hong will leap to mind.
Fast forward to November 2024 (Nineteen years after the above was written) and Vang Veng had acquired a reputation as a go-to party town for those travelling on a budget in SE Asia. It’s not just the kayaking and bouldering and whatever else-ering, it’s the craic in the evenings, often fuelled by all sorts of alcoholic mixes. The coloured buckets full of god-knows-what, with four friends sucking eagerly on their straws, sure make for an Instagram moment worthy of sharing. “I am here and you are there: Yo!” What a statement. This all made the headlines for all the wrong reasons when six visitors, nearly all teens, joined in the fun but tragically succumbed to deadly methanol poisoning. Where did they score the fateful contaminated bucket or was it the free shots at the start of the evening? Was it at the guesthouse, or at a bar? Information following the ongoing investigation is controlled, therefore hard to come by.
In the free-for-all that Vang Vieng had become, perhaps it was only a matter of time before some rogue actors had an impact. There were certainly signs of the direction in which things were heading even way back then, with unregulated everything: buildings, trips and entertainment.
My best-ever day’s cycling through the mountains on Highway 13 ends abruptly when I hit Vang Vieng, that’s 55 kms at an average of 17.5 kph – not too bad considering the steep gradients. I had been warned about Vang Vieng with its pizza places and Sunday roast and discos and it’s true. Be prepared to not actually be in Laos! The main road into town is completely dug up such that it reminds me of Chaweng Beach on Samui which went through the same growing pains in the 1980s as unfettered development sped ahead of street infrastructure, leaving large pipes and wires protruding next to gaping holes all along the principal roads. I check into a guesthouse and decamp in my $3-a-night room before going for a walk.
I notice that everywhere people are lounging around on couches in cafés which are orientated towards TV screens. Bodies are sprawled out watching ‘Friends’ in the middle of the day. I thought that that was what you travelled for – to escape exactly that! It’s only when I discover the restaurants and guesthouses down by the river that I get it. I understand now what all these folks are doing hanging out here. The view over towards the mountains in the distance is great and the river, the Nam Song, adds to the idyll. There are bamboo hut affairs built over the river’s edge where you can lounge with your beer and watch the sun going down. The ‘Doors Greatest Hits’ wafts across the water and inexperienced kayakers slalom along and bump into the rickety bridge. Yes, I can see why this has become a kind of backpacker doss-stop. Sunset to ‘Riders on the Storm,’ – takes me back a bit!
The main drag is brightly lit in the evening: you can get a massage, there’s music, film, bopping, internet and banana pancakes which is what I settle on. Like most garish places, you just see the bits you want to see in the end, so Vang Vieng is a lot easier on the eye than when I first rode into town. But I can understand it generating antipathy, particularly for those on a ‘back in time’ adventure.
My guesthouse staff are almost reverential in their respectfulness, I can see that the Lao people are deferential to a person deemed to be of superior standing - I guess it is fairly Asian. I am familiar with it through work in both Thailand and Vietnam although it manifests itself in different ways, with the Vietnamese being much more assertive in a social context. I suspect that the Lao character is much nearer to that of Thais than Vietnamese. There’s a revealing quote from Norman Lewis about Laos, “Europeans who come here to live, soon acquire a certain recognisable manner. They develop quiet voices and gentle, rapt expressions.” I’ve seen that with farangs in Thailand too, those who really embrace the culture, especially those who learn Thai. Language really is culture-giving, and let’s face it, if you go to the great lengths that are required to become fluent in a language then it is likely that your fixation is no flirtation, but rather an obsession with every nuance of daily life. The Thais often remark that such people are 'more Thai than Thai' – sometimes this is said with admiration, sometimes with irritation. No-one likes a smarty, correcting them on minor cultural etiquette!
Next morning (off again) sees me skirting the man-made lake, Ang Nam Ngum, which is 250 square kilometres in area. The road has a high nuisance quotient in that it is undulating, mile after mile of up and down making it difficult to settle into any kind of rhythm. Long climbs are followed by shortish freewheels, thus making it tedious. The villages are still poor, but the children’s hair is washed – maybe that’s some sort of economic indicator. My first stop at a roadside shop after two hours sees me scrutinising the wares for something to eat. These convenience stores (shacks really) string up their wares so you see a streamer of single-use shampoo sachets like flypaper, ditto for one-shot washing powder. They sell cigarettes in ones and twos along with a match and bit of strike. I am delighted to discover that this place also sells lemon puffs in twos – I snaffle a brace with my Seven Up.
Whilst I am sitting there two lads come in with generous bright red lips – they are either examples of the Lao alternative sex or they have both eaten a raspberry lolly recently. They want the lady to put on a DVD or two, all the stores have racks of copied DVDs, they then spend ages selecting one. It turns out to be a scantily clad girl gyrating to local music. It makes for a strange scene as, quite unabashed, all three cast an expert eye over proceedings on the small screen before sheepishly grinning at me as I nearly spit out a mouthful of lemon puff. “Are you buying or what?” the lady demands (I am guessing here but it did sound rather harsh), they look at me to see what I think. I think it’s quite good but I haven’t seen the rest to be honest, so I don’t know whether to give a thumbs-up or shrug. I shrug. They shrug too so she abruptly pulls the plug on the show and puts the disk back in its wrapper with a huff – off they trudge. “Do you want to buy it?” she gestures, looking at me. I politely decline, chewing on my lemon puff. I’d make a mental note of its name just in case but the DVD cover is in Lao script.
Back on the road the countryside is completely littered with plastic bags, if you threw a metre quadrat you’d net four per frame, I bet. Many third world countries are quite recycle-conscious in that you don’t get a bottle or a can, you get what you want, even a liquid like soup, in a plastic bag with a straw sticking up through the elastic band at the top. So far so good, but it breaks down rather if the bag is then slung out of the window of the bus, and unfortunately that is the case here.
Checking in there’s not much to do in the one-horse town of Phu Hong. Actually, it hasn’t even got a horse. One bike town then. I will keep my one-bike in the room as a matter of habit, there's no point in waking up to find that someone has loaded it onto the back of a pick-up. At breakfast I ask for bread-butter-jam and am greeted with a nod which hides an ever-so slight frown. I get the impression that they don’t have to deal with this order too often – like the American asking for a Waldorf Salad in Fawlty Towers, I almost feel guilty as the kitchen staff are marshalled for a rearguard action. One is dispatched to the market to get a loaf of bread, another scurries over the road for a pot of jam. I am eventually proudly served, with my muddy coffee, a huge fresh loaf, an unopened jar of strawberry jam, a tub of ghee and a big oblong meat cleaver to spread it all with. I am humbled by the experience as all eyes watch how I use the cleaver, which is wider than the top of the tub, to get at the ghee that is unspreadable anyway. I slice the bread and wipe it in the ghee before spooning a gob of jam onto it. Everybody nods with satisfaction at my breakfast ingenuity. This keeps me absorbed anyway for a good half hour before asking for a doggy-bag for the rest of the loaf. In future, say ‘Memorable breakfasts?’ and Phu Hong will leap to mind.
Fast forward to November 2024 (Nineteen years after the above was written) and Vang Veng had acquired a reputation as a go-to party town for those travelling on a budget in SE Asia. It’s not just the kayaking and bouldering and whatever else-ering, it’s the craic in the evenings, often fuelled by all sorts of alcoholic mixes. The coloured buckets full of god-knows-what, with four friends sucking eagerly on their straws, sure make for an Instagram moment worthy of sharing. “I am here and you are there: Yo!” What a statement. This all made the headlines for all the wrong reasons when six visitors, nearly all teens, joined in the fun but tragically succumbed to deadly methanol poisoning. Where did they score the fateful contaminated bucket or was it the free shots at the start of the evening? Was it at the guesthouse, or at a bar? Information following the ongoing investigation is controlled, therefore hard to come by.
In the free-for-all that Vang Vieng had become, perhaps it was only a matter of time before some rogue actors had an impact. There were certainly signs of the direction in which things were heading even way back then, with unregulated everything: buildings, trips and entertainment.
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