If it hasn’t been your day, your week, your month or even your year…
To say I was not a fan of Vang Vieng is only putting it mildly. Vang Vieng is a small town between Luang Prabang and Laos’ capital city, Vientiane, located among limestone mountain karsts and the Nam Song River. Its claim to fame is being a party mecca for young backpackers who come there to go tubing down the beautiful river and allow themselves to be reeled in to shore to drink Beer Lao and Lao-Lao whiskey by the bucketful. Sean had no interest in tubing, so we only stopped overnight to check out the scenery and break up the trip between Luang Prabang and Vientiane. By all accounts, Vang Vieng is touristy, Westernized, and rowdy, and most travelers whose blogs I read seemed to view Vang Vieng as a guilty pleasure after their visits. So I was prepared to see some good-natured debauchery and even the strange phenomenon of cafe after cafe running endless loops of Friends, the Simpsons, and Family Guy.
But I underestimated the scene in Vang Vieng. I know lots of people love it, and I’m sure I sound like the old, thirty-something fuddy-duddy that I am, but to me, Vang Vieng is a giant frat party gone out of control. From dusk onward, the streets are filled with stumbling, obnoxious kids clad only in skimpy bathing suits (in a very conservative country) and with lewd sayings written in marker up and down their bodies. As one group stumbled by, cackling and shouting, a bikini-clad girl filled her companion’s cup to the brim with whiskey. He chugged it down and threw his cup on the street while yelling “F*ck yeah!” like he was in the basement of a college house and not a guest in someone else’s country.
Despite listening to pounding bass late into the night (thank you Travelfish reviewers who called our hotel “quiet;” you apparently are deaf or didn’t come back to the room until 4 a.m.), we decided to take the afternoon bus to Vientiane and first check out an organic farm up the river. If we thought this would get us away from the rowdiness in town we’d be sadly mistaken; the farm has the unfortunate location of being right near the start of the tubing. This means instead of peaceful sounds of birds chirping, the farm gets to hear the sounds of competing music screeching out over the river.
Other than the noise pollution, the farm was lovely. We took a tour led by “Mr. T”, a little Laotian man who is passionate about organic farming and leading by example. He hopes to show other local farmers that organic farming can be profitable and healthy. The farm centers around its mulberry trees, used for mulberry tea, mulberry wine, mulberry tempura and most deliciously, mulberry shakes. The farm also grows organic vegetables and fruits (we saw starfruit and jackfruit trees, for example) and has chickens, pigs, and goats. In addition to sustainable farming, the farm also runs various projects for the community, such as building inexpensive housing out of local materials, paying fair wages to local people, running schools for local kids, and a goat lending program where locals receive goats and repay their debt with baby goats.
Hearing about one man’s efforts to better the local community made me less cranky about our stopover in Vang Vieng (or at least until the tuk-tuk driver insisted on charging us $5 to return to town even though they were already going that way any way to pick up more tubers). Besides eating delicious fresh organic meals by the river, and learning more about organic farming in a third-world Communist country, it gave me a different perspective on the party scene in Vang Vieng that I wish more travelers would consider. There’s nothing wrong with having a good time, but it shouldn’t be at the expense of a community. I’m not even talking about people’s claim that Vang Vieng is a former shell of its former, sleepy self and that its Lao culture had disappeared; that happens to a lot of places where tourism takes over. I’m talking more specifically about the locals who lived by the river long before tubing came to town, who have to listen to the partying day in and day out, who can’t afford or who don’t want to move. I’m talking about the little Lao kids who see the drunk, raunchy foreigners and think all foreigners are that way or that it is an appropriate way to behave. Both the travelers who participate in behavior they wouldn’t necessarily engage in at home and locals who profit from the travelers are all complicit. There’s nothing wrong with letting loose and having a few beers and some fun, but I wish more travelers would think more about the consequences of their actions.
Now that I’m done ranting, if you could please get off my lawn.
Mr. T explains organic crunchy things to Sean in the midst of the mulberry trees.
Mr. T greeted the goats with "Bonjour" instead of "Sabaidee." Most of the goats, used for the farm's community lending program and to make goat's cheese, were donated by a Frenchman.
If you don't think about how they are destined to become your bacon, these baby pigs are adorable. We watched this pink guy doggedly worm his way in between his polka-dotted buddies.
Mulberry fields on the farm.
I was disgusted by the behavior of travelers in Vang Vieng. It is out of control and disrespectful. I, too, wondered about the children and the effect this type of exposure has on them. It’s really too bad.
On the flip side, the community goat program sounds really neat, and I pity foo (the drunk tourist) who messes with Mr. T.