Karst Climbing & Gap Year Hell

Vang Vieng. It was somewhat begrudgingly put on the itinerary for its reported astounding natural beauty and widely available action adventure sports. ‘Begrudgingly’, because it is also a renowned party time town. Now we love a good party as well you all know but a ‘party town’ conjures up all sorts of unpleasant images of Magaluf, Agia Nappa, Paphos etc etc.
Alarm bells started to ring when we were the oldest people on the bus by about 10 years. They grew louder when we noticed that everyone on the bus already had a hangover. But we’re pretty cool and hip and street so we just blended in (me reading Anna Karenina, George regaling me with geographical facts on the surrounding regions)... On arrival the town didn’t seem as hideous as we’d feared. We were staying on the other side of the river from all the action (to enable us to sleep at night) so we trudged across in the midday sun and got ourselves installed in a lovely rattan cabin. Unfortunately, the incredibly drunk (middle aged) man (we were not the oldest people in the hood) who was propping up the bar when we arrived at the guesthouse was still propping up the bar when we sat down for lunch... and when we hired our bikes to pedal off to see some caves... and when we got back from the caves... and when we went out to get dinner... and when we got back from dinner... and the next morning at breakfast. Wow.
The overwhelming majority of the drinkers on the party side of the river though, were 18 year old home counties lovvies on their first solo foray into the big wide world before the shackles of ‘Uni’ tie them down. There were a lot of bare feet, bikinis, Beerlao vest tops, booze in buckets, and a quite a lot of injuries – mostly from the tubing down the river whilst mildly/entirely inebriated (they have bars on the river to facilitate this inebriation => injury).
We obviously shunned all forms of inebriation (we even downgraded from a bottle of Beerlao each with dinner to one between two – they’re really big you know!) and instead spent our time soaking up the beautiful surroundings, swimming in the river against the current, cycling, karst climbing, kayaking and eating. We did succumb to the river tubing one afternoon, but alas, by the time we got to the tube hire place it was 4pm (heading out in the midday sun is just not sensible you know) so we had to do a shortened version to get back in time – which meant we missed all the bars. Shame.