Day 122 – Tubing in Vang Vieng.

We went to bed quite early last night because of that crazy storm so getting up to go on a small trek and some tubing wasn’t that hard. We got picked up just before 9am and thought we were going to be in a small group but it ended up just being the pair of us and a guide. We got driven out to see four different caves. The first cave was called Elephant cave because part of the rock formation looks like an elephant, I’m not sure whether it is natural or if someone has made it like that, but either way it was pretty cool!

We then went and explored through two more caves, I can’t remember what they were called but it was really cool! The last cave we sat on a tube and pulled on a rope the whole way through. It was so dark but there is something exciting and mysterious about being the only three people in a cave. We were then given lunch which consisted of a chicken skewer thing and rice, delicious!

We were then driven back to the start of the tubing river called the Nam Song. Like I said yesterday, this place is famous because of the tubing. So there used to be 26 bars, or something like that? Now there are only 4. It used to have zip lines, slides and other stupidly dangerous things and after, I think, 22 tourists died in 2011 the Laos Government thought they should do something about it. They turned up and ripped it all out in 2012 meaning most people now miss this place out. It is currently dry season meaning the river doesn’t have as much water in it as it normally would, so I was quite glad we had a guide because by the end we couldn’t be bothered to try and swim our way down the river in the tube, so instead we held onto his kayak and made him do all the work. I’m not quite sure how far but we covered quite a lot of ground, maybe 8km? Who knows, but it was far! We didn’t go in any of the so called bars, we didn’t really see any one else apart from some people kayaking but overall I really enjoyed my day. It was really relaxing to float down a river chilling in the sunshine!

Once again the evening brought us a crazy storm so we didn’t really do a lot!

Day 107 – Mui Ne bike adventures and Tyler’s birthday.

I didn’t sleep very well so didn’t join them for the early morning activities but joint them for second breakfast at 9am. The curtains don’t really do anything in this hostel so when the sun rises about 5.30, that’s what time you wake up. We discovered at breakfast that our new friends had had pretty much every meal in the popular family restaurant since they’ve been here and why wouldn’t you when it’s right on the beach front and is the cheapest place to eat in the whole town. It’s even the cheaper to buy a bottle of water here than it is in the shop next door to us.

After breakfast we hopped on the bikes and went to visit fairy springs This place is made of sand and the colours are just amazing. We trekked through it for about half an hour before finding a waterfall and then walking back to the bikes. 

Our main excursion for the day was to find the Big Buddha at Ta Cu Mountain. We thought it was closer than it was, after just over an hours worth of driving and asking many different people for directions we had arrived! It was a bit more expensive than we thought it was going to be but seeing as we had now come all this way we obviously had to go in. It was 120,000 dong for the cable car and then another 20,000 just to enter the place, so it was only £4. We got in our cable car, which was quite cool as it took us up and over the mountain. 

The views were amazing but we didn’t realise as we got out of the cable car we still had to walk another 100m or so up to the Big Buddha. It was quite a good work out and they’re not lying when they say it’s big! It’s called Thich-Ca-Nhap-Niet-Ban and is 49 metres long and is the largest reclining Buddha in Vietnam.

When we left here we made the long journey back to Mui Ne through rush hour traffic and obviously went for dinner in the popular family restaurant as it was Tyler’s birthday after all!