Vang Vieng

10/5/2006

We again woke up really early this morning to take a 6 hour AC van ride from Luang Prabang to Vang Vieng, a small town on the Nam Song river. The ride was extremely winding and up and down, but I was able to read a book called Tuesdays With Morrie, which was excellent. I understand why my dad gives a copy of the book to all of the ER residents. Hopefully I'll be able to incorporate some of the book's guidelines into my life.

We arrived in Vang Vieng and checked in to our great guest house overlooking the river (see right). There wasn't really anything to see in this town, but we were able to go tubing down the river, which was pretty relaxing. There were several stops on the river for drinks and zip swinglines. One swingline was pretty awesome. You climbed up about 15-20 feet above the water. Then you held on to a rope and handle and just dropped off the tower. I was able to go really fast on the swing and launch pretty high. It was great. This one guy not from our group dropped from the tower but didn't have a good grip on the handle causing him to smack the water flat on his back. It was pretty hilarious, except we saw him later on the river on the back of a motor boat. I guess it hurt. The picture to the left is a view from our guest house.

One weird thing about Vang Vieng is that a lot of the restaurants have TVs showing episodes of the TV show Friends. It's pretty strange. However, I was quite pleased when I walked into a used book store and saw Family Guy playing.