Vang Vien is a town with such beautiful nature, but it's beauty has had a price. It is extremely touristy, full of backpackers mostly.
1. Guesthouse/hotel
2. Restaurant/bar – all have televisions blaring at an incredible volume, most playing the
3. Pancake stalls – hundreds of street vendors that sell pancakes in the same 6 varieties along the same street, all next to each other.
4. Internet cafes – internet is 3x more expensive than in any other city in
5. Tour operators – tubing, mountain biking, kayaking, caving, etc…
6. Souvenir shops
7. Street food, generally
Tourists seem to do two things in Vang Vien. Firstly, they go tubing. This basically entails tourists hiring a rubber tyre, taking a tuk tuk 4km out of town to get the river and pulled along by the current back to town. What would ordinarily take about an hour can take a whole day as stop along the way at a number of bars set up along the way so it takes at least hours, and by the time they stumble back into town they are extremely drunk. The bars have a fantastic set up. As people roll past in their tubes, someone from the bar throws out a rope with a stick or a flotation device at you... If you like the look of the place, you can grab it and get out of the river, if you don't like it, you just keep going. Most places have flying foxes or giant swings that you can play for hours on... Each time you plunge into the water, either someone throws you a rope to reel you back in, or you have to swim really really fast to the edge of the water so the current doesn't drag you away. Along with the swings and flying foxes, some bars have volleyball courts, others have sun decks... But all have copious amounts of alcohol being consumed, and because of the competition, the prices are not as exorbitant as you might imagine. Tubing and cheap alcohol... Quite a dangerous combination when you consider the current is sometimes so strong people have drowned in the river. And that is while sober! I have to confess that I joined in the fun of tubing, although it seemed like a stereotypical thing to do that normally tend to avoid, but it looked like such fun that I couldn't miss it. I made sure I had a life vest, though, just in case!
The other thing people do in Vang Vien is sit in the Friends Bars, and watch Friends playing on a never-ending loop. I had read about these bars in the Lonely Planet, but didn't actually believe that they existed, or rather, didn't think that they would be as bad as they were, but they were actually worse. Before arriving I vowed I wouldn't set foot inside a Friends bar the entire time, out of protest, and I figured there would surely be hundreds of other tourists doing the same. Surely such places couldn't manage to attract tourists and actually make good business, I figured. Well, when I arrived I was astounded to find that these places were FULL and other places that had no televisions were EMPTY... What can you do, when it is the tourists that are driving the economy in such towns, and that is apparently what people want? I boycotted any bar or restaurant with a television blaring out of principle, but in such a place what effect could my one-person crusade hope to make????
1 comment:
as stereotypically touristy as tubing sounds, it does sound like a lot of fun and I would love to go there now to do it!
The friends bars sound bizarre. It sounds like you're lucky to have found any places without tv - if that is where all the tourists go, it's a wonder the non-tv plces have manged to stay open.
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