Partycapital of Laos – Vang Vieng!!
Written by Christian Haugen on April 6, 2009 – 3:47 am -If there is one place in south east asia where the party never stops it’s gotta be Vang Vieng.. Vang Vieng is actually a pretty small town about 3,5 hours north of Vientiane (the capital of Laos), and considering that Laos is a communist regime you wouldn’t think that Vang Vieng could be the party haven it is. The thing that has turned Vang Vieng from a sleepy town, into a buzzing place easily compared to party locations in Europe, is the simple combinations of tubing and party hungry backpackers. Alright, you probably don’t know what tubing is, but here’s a quick explanation. Tubing has basically turned the river that runs through Vang Vieng into a party scene worthy of mentioning along the likes of the fullmoon parties of Thailand and silent parties of Goa.
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Tags: buckets, climbing, Laos, party, Tubing, Vang Vieng
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Video, video, video – Behold!
Written by Christian Haugen on March 25, 2009 – 8:06 pm -I finally had time to sit down and get video working here on 175days.no since I know that you have all been gripping your seats in anticipation of some moving images. Right?? Nonetheless, whether you want it or not the geek inside of me can’t but help it. The videos are from the gibbon experience that my last post was about and the rest are from the weird phenomenon also referred to as tubing. Im gonna write more about it later but a quick explanation is simply a whole lot of westerners in the middle of Laos swimming down a river with a multitude of bars. This results in experimentation with local variants of the much loved Bucket and of course the odd acrobatic adventure of giant swings and slides. Enjoy!
The first video here is from me zipping along the wires on the gibbon experience. I think my expression really says it all..
Tags: Laos, The Gibbon Experience, Tubing, Vang Vieng, Video, Zipping Bokeo
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The Gibbon Experience – Tarzan time!
Written by Christian Haugen on March 22, 2009 – 8:01 am -A gibbon is probably the coolest monkey around. Just to prove my point I included a youtube video below. They’re awesome!!
To get things straight we have moved from Thailand to Laos now. We went from Chiang Mai to Chiang Khong where we crossed into Huai Xai on the Laos side of the Mekong river. Writing this we have finished the gibbon experience and are currently travelling down the Mekong river on a boat headed for Luang Prabang. We first heard about the gibbon experience from Tom and Zoe, our awesome diving friends from Koh Tao! They really recommended it, and after hearing about it we just had to go!
The Gibbon experience is a conservation programme made to preserve the gibbons and the habitat they live in. The jungle in Laos is in danger of being chopped down, since the people living in it can make som fast cash by chopping down the ancient forrest. The point of the conservation programmes is to replace the income that logging brings and replace it with a sustainable tourist income. The gibbon experience is making good money everyday, something the logging industry can do just once..
The Gibbon Experience is basically treks into the jungle where you get to look for gibbons. The twist here is that they have given you the ability to go after the gibbons on their own turf, high up in the canopy!
Tags: Gibbon, Gibbon Experience, Gibbons, Laos, Treehouse
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