Vang Vieng

So many terms can describe Vang Vieng. Its a wild and crazy place dropped into the middle of beautiful obscurity between the Laos capital of Vientiane and the Laos tourist area of Luang Prabang. The beauty is only to be found outside town, where limestone caves and cliffs rise triumphantly out of the ground and create stunning backdrops for the relative debauchery occuring within city limits. Laws don't apply. Rules are bent and broken, lying splintered on the floors covered in sweat and booze and some other unidentifiable but questionable substances. All the bars have menus for drugs here, without exception. A massive mafia keeps the police well paid and out of the way, lending room for such delectable delights as mushroom pizza, and we ain't talking shittakes. Others still are replete with opium, marijuana and an intoxicating cocktail of other substances designed to scramble your insides enough that you'll actually partake in the stupid shit people are demanding you do. Alcohol is a happy substance, but the available options and free booze also encourage a level of poor judgement usually reserved for the mentally ill. That being said, jumping in with two feet is the only option. Happily, provided a couple screws in the head stay tight, it can be an enjoyable place. Leaving town leads to lovely areas and lagoons, which, combined with a heady dose of the alcoholic substance known as "swamp juice", can lead you to try dangerous things on rope swings and earn you a shin full of stitches. The most enjoyable part of the entire debaucle will likely be haggling the hospital workers down in price for your health. Really helps the individual put a price on well being.

After that, you might ignore warnings on your antibiotics and head down to the bars to "be a trooper" and continue the party. This might lead to slow healing abilities, but it certainly won't hurt your feeling of having embraced the experience. Nearly everyone is injured in Vang Vieng, though most don't bother to run the proper course of cleanliness, which results in massive infection and a tendancy to juice heavily from obscure wounds. Delight.

No food worth talking about.

One thing that does bear mention in VV is the reps. After a four day stay, leaving was the single most important possibility and after leaving was treating the massive hangover associated with having bent time and space to provide more room for alcohol over the past four days. The "reps", are the falang people who work at the bars and clubs in VV, spending months or even years living a lifestyle best described by reading Hunter S. Thompson's "Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas". Yellow, jaundiced eyes, soulless and devoid of any emotion except a will to party are common. At the river for 11 A.M., drunk before twelve, and usually pushed to party until 3A.M. or later, these people are truly testing the borders of human partying potential. Jokes abound about photo studies in which you take a good looking and strong individual , subject them to a daily dose of VV, and take a picture of them every day for their entire stay as a rep. The rapid degeneration would be evident.

Other than partying, nothing gets done, especially in light of the shin-hole.The only other mentionables are that we manage to meet up with the great Scot again, which adds considerably to the fun had. That is all, there are no pictures, because noone was dumb enough to bring their camera out.