BACKPACKERS GUIDE TO LAOS

My son is singlehandedly going to be responsible for the death of the gap year in our area. I didn’t ever expect it to be particularly cultural but honestly, it’s disappointingly concentrated on all things alcoholic…..and even worse – just to add to every parents nightmare regarding Vang Vieng in terms of drownings and breaking things like heads when swinging off ropes – just look at that accident waiting to happen with all our children in the bar on stilts….it doesn’t bear thinking about.

Here are his unedited top tips. Be afraid.

LAOS

No one in our group could contain their excitement for this part of our trip. Laos contains the infamous Vang Vieng which we had all heard so much about and had waited so long to visit this part of the world..

I don’t think we could have arrived in Laos in a cooler style as well. We decided to take the 2 day slow boat from the border of Thailand and Laos, Chiang Khong to be exact, into Laos and down the Mekong River to Luang Prabang. This was one of the best decisions we made throughout the whole trip. I think the whole package costed around 20 pounds but this included bus from Chiang Mai to Chiang Khong, 1 day boat from here to a small village in Laos called Pak Beng, one nights accommodation in Pak Beng, 1 day boat from here to Luang Prabang. We’d also heard rumours that this was not just a slow boat but also had a reputation of being a bit of a party boat and these rumours did not fail us. We each rocked up with a bottle of whisky on the first day and luckily on the boat there was a fantastic group of people and not only were u surrounded by some stunning scenery down the Mekong River but you were also getting pissed for 7 hours each day! What more could you want!

Luang Prabang

We thought it would be wise to have a couple of days detox before we ruined ourselves in Vang Vieng so we stopped for 2 days in the small town of Luang Prabang, around 6 hours north of Vang Vieng.

Accommodation

Throughout the town there are many guesthouses to choose from which each give good prices and deals with washing clothes etc. so I would advise someone going to Luang Prabang to just walk down the main street and hear the different deals that each guest house has to offer.

Food

Laotian food is completely different to Thai food, mostly that its not as good but also because its much more western than we’d expected with a few fried rices and fried noodles thrown in there.

Things to do

Although this small town was supposed to be for our detox before we disintegrated our livers, we still managed to find a good night out here. All the bars shut around 11pm (don’t ask my why!) and everyone then goes to the bowling alley, a 10 minute tuk tuk from town which stays open till 3am, and has an incredibly fun evening of drinking whisky and bowling whilst you’re drunk!

One of the things I most regret on my trip, was not crashing a Laotian wedding..even in the guide book it advises you to try this and apparently everyone is so happy that you’re there that you have an amazing evening with free alcohol and food and a nice dance with the bride and groom!

VANG VIENG

Every parents nightmare is for their child to visit the town of Vang Vieng. There has been so much hype about how dangerous Vang Vieng is and how people die there every year and I’m sure lots of parents have banned their kids from visiting VV because of this.

VV is not dangerous as long as you keep your wits about you. It’s extremely easy to get very drunk as whisky is cheaper than water out in Laos and so many of the bars offer unlimited free shots and free buckets at certain times but due to its reputation, everyone working down at the river are extremely careful about the drunk people and the river. While I was there, only one bar had a rope swing open and one point where you could jump into the river because I went in low season and the river is no where near as high as it is during the peak months.

Our routine in VV was very simple. Get up around 12pm, and stumble down to the restaurants in town, which have EXACTLY the same menu in each restaurant and therefore the only deciding factor about where you eat is what is showing on the plasma screen TV’s. In each restaurant, either ‘Friends’, ‘Family Guy’ or ‘South Park’ are showing constantly throughout the day and night and so everyone eats there food in silence whilst staring zombie like at these TV’s until you’ve had enough and want to go down to the river. We usually tuk tuk’d down to the river around 3pm and started drinking. Now the first bar called ‘Q Bar’ gave unlimited free whisky shots which wasn’t a bad deal and then everyone would slowly move onto the second bar ‘Star Bar’ which would play fun drinking games and my friends and I would play a LOT of Beer Pong. Now by this stage it would be around 5 30pm and you could tell everyone was well on their way..and people would be swimming across the river to the third bar called ‘Why Not? Bar’ which was always my favourite. This was probably because I was always the drunkest when we arrived at this bar but also because it gave out free buckets between 5 30-6 30pm. Everyone went back up into town around 8 30pm to have some food before going back out again! The two main bars in town, ‘Smile Bar’ and ‘Bucket Bar’ both had a free bucket hour each evening and so if you played your cards right, you really didn’t have to spend much money at all and could get most of your drinks free!