Making Our Way to Vang Vieng and Beyond…

Getting there…

We’d be lying if we told you we had a smooth journey to Vang Vieng. As we headed onto highway 13, pretty much the one main road in Vientiane, we hit our first hurdle within the first 30 minutes. Remember our previous post with the photo of our bike and packs? Well, the rack holding our packs gave in and completely snapped off, leaving our packs dangling along the road. Not to worry though, this luckily happened right in front of a motor shop, where we met the owner who was very willing to help us. He got his crew together and quickly got some rebar and welded our rack back on. He didn’t charge us and we were very grateful for his kindness. Problem #1 was solved in about half an hour.

We hit our next stop, which was a bike shop on the side of the road somewhere. We hopped off our bike to approach the mechanic only to find him washing his chicken, which was pretty cool and funny. He changed our oil and gave us a quick tune up for $5.

We were feeling pretty good until an hour later we hit our next problem. We were surprisingly lucky again because our bike broke down and we started rolling down the end of the highway on neutral right up to a bike shop. The mechanic needed half an hour and 100,000 kip so we sat and watched him fix our bike.

There was only an hour or so left of our ride to Vang Vieng and we desperately wanted to make it without anymore issues. We fortunately made it all the way to Vang Vieng, but ended up with another issue that we decided to deal with the next day. The problem of all problems: our bike wouldn’t start.

The Better Side of Vang Viang

The owner of a bike rental place nearby knew a mechanic who could fix our bike so we just went with it since we were desperate. We dropped off our bike and decided to explore the town like normal people – by foot. We ended up discovering a sketchy bamboo bridge that brought us across the river to some beautiful wheat fields with cows and farmers, complemented by a stunning array of mountains. We followed a path heading towards a cave and mountain viewpoint. The climb to the viewpoint was a real climb, up jagged rocks and makeshift ladders. This was pretty awesome and the highlight of our time in Vang Vieng, which is a small town purely built on tourism and partying.

The view from the other side of the river

Farmers collecting wheat (we think)

Such cool mountains

The view from the top

After this lovely adventure, we went back to the shop to see how our bike was doing. We were disappointed to see we were charged more than we agreed upon (350,000 kip) but we had no choice. However, shortly after riding away we noticed yet another issue so we drove it all the way back to the shop. The mechanic was a huge asshole and didn’t want to help us but he reluctantly agreed and ended up fixing the bike for us. He wanted another 50,000 kip but there was no way we were paying him since we were already overcharged in the first place (he knew it too). The entire exchange was unpleasant and left us with a sour taste in our mouths. So, we got on our shitty bike and got the hell out of there.