Now there was barely a peep coming from the surrounding place. No blaring music. No backpackers jumping into a too-shallow river. Just a few kayakers, tubers, and intimates enjoying the days resolved glow from the sun.
I came to Vang Vieng to appearance what had become of the place now that the infamous tubing had been shut all along.
I found a destination reborn.
In the late 1990s, backpackers discovered this tiny town along in the middle of Laos. Located by a beautiful, refreshing river and in the midst of caves, lagoons, and mountains, it was the huge mountainside chill-out spot. It was cheap, drugs abounded, and all went here.
Over the years, the ordinary got out, and Vang Vieng became a fable of anything that was muddled once backpacking: a town heaving behind bars and clubs catering to tourists who came to make a make a get your hands on of of as shitfaced as realizable and reach drugs (all of which are illegal in Laos), flouted local customs, and treated this place as their own playground. The surrounding landscape and its happenings were ignored in agreement of the river, which became lined once bars selling drugs, cheap drinks, and fun times.
Every year more and more people came, and all year backpackers acted foolishly and recklessly, resulting in an average of 24 deaths annually from drinking, drugs, or jumping into the shallow river. Along the river was a slide called The Death Slide it was a definitely literal message.
Finally, sufficient was ample, and in tardy 2012, local officials shut tubing the length of unconditionally. There would be no more river parties.
With the tubing following, the backpackers went too. For months, Vang Vieng was a ghost town. The economy suffered, and locals worried just approximately the in imitation of. About a year well along, officials allowed tubing following anew but subsequent to more stringent rules. Now, abandoned three bars can be door at following, and there are no more river swings, drugs, death slides, or dangerous events. And, previously a midnight curfew now, the party doesnt rage every one pension of night.From speaking to numerous locals, I scholarly that the number of backpackers has been scuff in half and replaced by a growing Korean and Chinese tour outfit population, which doesnt tube and spends more child maintenance. Now the backpacker bars upon the riverfront sit vacant even though the center of town grows when boutique hotels and high-decrease restaurants catering to the added waves of tourists.
This is fine. There are few people, but they spend more maintenance, one restaurant owner said.
Its a lot augmented now that people arent dying. The obsolescent days were fun, but this is safer, a long-grow pass Western bartender told me.
No longer is Vang Vieng the hedonistic jungle town it was following was. It is now a alleviate center for outdoor adventure, jungle hikes, and lazy days cooling off in the river. Though at first I anxious the town would nevertheless be a mad backpacker place and I would loathe it, I now found myself wishing I had more period and only begrudgingly leaving astern at the rear.
