Vang Viang is everything people were saying: It’s a small, bustling backpacker town with tons of things to do – and plenty of bars and hammocks that will keep you from doing anything at all. In short: It’s a pretty cool place for a holiday!

The number of things you can do around Vang Viang is really astounding: You can go rock climbing, canoeing, caving, kayaking, rafting, trekking with a guided tour or without, go for a swim in the river, take a mountain bike or motor bike for a ride through some of the most breathtaking scenery I’ve ever seen in my whole life, or you can simply lie in a hammock or watch movies in one of the video-cafes that are scattered all over town.

The landscape here is really a-m-a-z-i-n-g! It’s too bad that it was always a bit hazy when I was there, so I didn’t make may landscape photos. But I think that the sunset-photo I made will give you an idea of what it looks like. I mean, really: These mountains are coming out of nowhere and just rise vertically out of the ground! Driving through this area you alternately have a feeling like you are in a fairy tail and looking up at the evil wizards/dragons keep or through the remains of a giants dentist who has carelessly cast his patients teeth to the ground. Seriously: It’s amazing.

On my first day here I decided to take it easy and go “tubing”. Tubing is a wonderful outside (non-)activity that allows you to think you spent the whole day outside (surely a healthy thing to do) while at the same time you really don’t have to do anything and can even get drunk! So what is tubing? It’s rather simple, really: You get a big inner tube, like from a tractor, a tuk tuk drives you four kilometers up the river and then you spend the rest of the day going down town very, very slowly. And the best thing is: All along the way, the locals have build small rafts where you can buy beer and either drink it right there or take with you. There are also rope swings, wooded swings and overhangs from which you can jump into the river as well as one little restaurant. It’s really great fun and definitely takes longer then the three hours the trip is supposed to take. It took me and the Swedish I had met, close to 4,5 hours. Unfortunately I didn’t wear enough sunscreen so that I looked rather reddish when I came out the tube. That and I had two cuts on my feet: One from stepping on a sharp stone when I climbed out of the river for a piss and the other from angling with my foot for one of the bamboo rafts. That was really pretty stupid. Ah well, I’ll survive :-).