Day two in Vang Vieng. Today started okay, we got up about 8 and had breakfast, before we had to meet with out tour leader at 9. The agenda was pretty simple, we were going for a little hike to some caves and a swimming hole not far away from the city. The total distance was no more than 2 kilometers so we got there in a short time. The area was straight out of some postcard, really serene. Right now I don’t have internet access so I can’t load any images up for a little while, so you’ll just have to take my word for it how pretty it was. There were little wood bridges over clear pools of water that lead to alters, and on the side of the mountain was a series of stairs that lead up to a cave.

Later in the afternoon we decided to do some kayaking down the river here. I didn’t take any pics along the way but you have to imagine this, there are 8 of us just slowly going down the river, and we come up to a bend. You can hear loud American music, and as we make it around there are dozens of people dancing, drinking, and swimming. Some are jumping of zip lines some are jumping off ropes. There’s a girl with a beer in her hand in a bikini just dancing to the music, and some guy has two water bottles tied with rope and is swinging them like num-chucks. It was like stepping into decadence. So we’re still cruising along, most of stunned on what we are watching, and we come around another bend, this time there is twice as many people, and there’s a water slide that people are using to launch themselves into the water. The whole thing seemed wrong in some ways, but so much fun. If you’ve seen Apocalypse Now and can remember the part when they come into a camp that has all these lights on in the middle of the jungle, then a helicopter lands and out come some dancers, you’d know how strange it felt to see the people partying on the river today. So we pulled over and joined them. Since I’m older I felt a little strange being there, but it was so much fun. Now this is totally subjective and not based really on any facts, but from what I’ve been told is that during the Vietnam War, there was an American base here, which would mean that there are people here that know what it takes to satisfy the Western style of partying. As we were walking back to the hotel a couple of the girls were saying how much they didn’t like what they saw… I couldn’t help but think how great it was. :)

Tomorrow we leave early in the morning for a short bus ride to Vientiane.