As soon as we arrived back in Huay Xai, we were already booked on a 10-hour night-bus back to Luang Prabang.
No sooner had it arrived in Luang Prabang, we were already on a 7-hour connecting bus to Vang Vieng, the final stop on this arduous leg of our Laotian journey.
Vang Vieng is a small town nestled along the slow-moving Nam Song river, with beautiful karst mountains forming its backdrop.
As picturesque and relaxing as this sounds, it was at one time the hedonistic capital and biggest party destination in all of South East Asia. Yes, bigger than Koh Pha-Ngan, Koh Phi-Phi and Sihanoukville.
Being in South East Asia for a few months now, I would often see singlets and t-shirts saying 'Vang Vieng: In the Tubing', the grammatically bizarre slogan of this party place.
This tubing is where the party takes place: everyone rents a tube and floats down the Nam Song, sharing mixed drinks everyone brings along with them.
Along the river are makeshift bars, selling or even giving away buckets of incredibly strong booze and selling drugs anywhere from weed to crystal meth.
So when everyone is fucked out of their minds, this is when they have rope-swings and zip-lines over the river, which during the dry season is actually quite shallow in many places and incredibly fast-moving during the wet season.
All these elements created the most epic party imaginable except for the fact that in 2011-2012, over 20 people, mostly Australians, reportedly died there, and the Australian government told the Laotian government to shut it down.
The Laotian government did in fact shut it down and actually torched many of the riverside stalls to the ground, putting an end to the party and the party-related deaths that came with it.
When we arrived, Vang Vieng was a shadow of its hedonistic self: they had only recently allowed tubing to resume and had only given permission to two bars to operate along the river, along with an incredibly strict no-drug policy, as well as a no-jumping-or-swinging-into-the-river policy.
Fair Enough.
Josh and I went there knowing about the shut down, but decided to check it out anyways and enjoy the beautiful scenery and relaxing atmosphere.
Despite the crackdown, we still managed to find a few popping bars and were still quite hungover following our first night out.
What better way to cure a pounding hangover than to go rock climbing!
I had enjoyed it so much in Railey and Josh had never tried it before, so we decided to take advantage of the limestone karst surrounding us.
Our guide, from Adam's Rock Climbing School (www.Laos-climbing.com), brought us to a beautiful portion of the Nam Song where we could prove our strength and flexibility while simultaneously sweating out our hangovers.
After our morning of rock-climbing, I thought what better way to relax my soon-to-be-sore muscles, than floating down the river on a tube for a few hours.
Also, I wanted to buy a Vang Vieng singlet and thought I would be a hypocrite if I bought one and didn't actually tube. Josh didn't feel this turmoil and decided to sit this one out.
I brought only enough money to cover my tube rental and the deposit, along with Josh's underwater camera (The pictures and movies on it are still in Josh's possession so they are not being posted).
However, as soon as I hopped on the complimentary tuk tuk, I was instantly handed a water-bottle full of Lao whisky and coke.
Victoria and Sonia from the UK, Bram from Holland and Rigmor from Germany instantly welcomed me into their floating crew.
Since it was dry season and the water levels were quite low, we floated along the Nam Song at a fantastically leisurely pace.
Our initial group of 5 had swelled to at least 50-60 by mid-river and although I had never experienced it in its heyday, this was the tubing I was hoping for: relaxation, camaraderie and beautiful scenery; not to mention a little booze, some house music and some amazing times.
I partied with my adoptive crew for the rest of the evening and joined them at Moon Bar, the busiest late-night spot in Vang Vieng at the time.
The following day, Josh and I headed back to Vientiane to pick up our passports which we left at Funky Monkey hostel in order to get Vietnamese visas.
My good friend and travel buddy from Vancouver, Mike, was arriving to Hanoi, Vietnam on the 24th of February and Josh and I wanted to make sure we'd be there the same day to meet up with him.
Before our night-bus, we had the day to kill in Vientiane, so I decided to check out its sites.
My first stop was Patuxai, which should be called Laos' Arch de Triomphe. While it resembles Paris' monument in size and location, the fact that it remains unfinished since it was built in 1969 and its view looks out on a city completely devoid of any skyscrapers or even an impressive building, the comparisons end there.
From there I walked to Pha That Luang, or the Great Stupa. This monument is the most venerated and important in all of Laos. It is gilded in gold leaf and is quite beautiful to look at.
Unfortunately I arrived during the museum's lunch break so I wasn't able to enter the structure.
Lonely Planet doesn't recommend that travelers take the bus from Vientiane to Hanoi due to duration, hassle and negative experiences of their readers. We decided to neglect these warnings and would do it anyways! How bad could it be?
This bad.
We were picked up at 5pm from our hostel and driven to the bus station. After numerous futile efforts, a kind bus attendant finally told us the shitty-buses that touts were trying to get us on were not in fact the bus we had reserved.
When our foreigner-loaded bus did finally pull up, we put our things on it, only to have it drive away and not return for another hour.
When it did return, with our things thankfully still on it, we only left the bus station at 7:15pm.
The bus only arrived at the Vietnamese border at 2:30am and waited another 4 hours before it actually opened at 6:30am.
Trying to get our passports stamped among scores of Laotians and Vietnamese yelling and pushing their way through was not my idea of pleasant at this time of morning.
Once we all got stamped, we had to walk for 30 minutes through a very run-down and dreary no-mans-land.
It was already 8:30am by the time we all had our passports processed and our bags searched; and our driver was impatiently yelling at us to hurry up.
For the next 2 hours he drove like an absolute maniac, swerving and racing as if his life depended on it.
At one point, he swerved and seemed to have hit something. We all assumed it had been an animal.
Looking out the back window of the bus, we could see a person lying in a lifeless heap on the ground, their face covered in blood.
Some people on the bus ran out to see if the person was alive and if there was anything they could do to help.
By this point, local villagers had come to investigate and watched the drama unfold with dopey, unfazed grins on their faces.
Eventually they flagged down one of the few non-motorbike vehicles who would drive the victim to the nearest hospital, wherever that might be.
It was after this point that the police arrived to take pictures of the crime scene a la CSI and question the incredibly shaken-up driver.
After all of this, the police told the driver to continue to drive us to the nearest town! Unbelievable considering how on edge he must have been at this point.
Four hours after hitting that poor man, whose fate remains unknown, we finally reached the next big town to change buses and thankfully change drivers.
Our new bus was only on the road for an-hour-and-a-half before it pulled into a garage and proceeded to get a tire-change, and not just one tire, but fucking all of them!!!
It was almost 6pm by the time we were back on the road towards Hanoi.
Miraculously, the bus didn't stop anymore and we finally arrived at Hanoi's south bus station by 8:30pm, almost 28 hours after our initial pickup from Vientiane!
Despite the long and tedious drive and incredibly erratic driving by our 2 bus drivers, at least everyone on board arrived safe and sound. I just hope and pray that the poor man who was struck by our maniacal bus will one day be able to say the same.
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