May 4-6, 2025
Vang Vieng is the 2nd stop for our trip to Laos. We got there by 1 hour train from Luang Prabang. Vang Vieng is famous for having many blue lagoons, natural caves, and activities. Indeed, it was perhaps the place that we had the most fun in Laos.
Again, we called a taxi by Loca to take us to our hotel (Nive View Guesthouse), as least what it used to be. It was raining heavily when we arrived, so we could only see the construction site right in front of our hotel, so the owner brothers welcomed us, and even upgraded us to the top floors, although a lot of stairs, very spacy room, clean and strong A/C.
After the rain, we went out for dinner, and we were amazed by the colorful air balloons flying around. There were also group tours kayaking on the river.
There were many restaurants and stores by walking distance, but there were construction and holes in the roads everywhere because it was off-season, made it very difficult to walk. Also, none of the blue lagoons were at walking distance from town. So, instead of joining tours, we decided to rent a scooter to go around everyday.
It was perfect on the 1st day. We went to Lagoon No.1, jumped into the deep lagoon a few times, and swam in the cool water, hiked a long steep difficult route to the Phu Kham Cave, which was a bit scary because there were nobody inside at all, so dark that it was impossible to see the way inside without headlamp, deep and complicated routes that we could only follow the handwritten arrows on the stones, which was sometimes confusing. It was definitely an adventure. Luckily, we came out safe.
Afternoon, we rode to Lagoon No.3, and mostly relaxed, sat around under a roof to eat our lunch. We bought sandwich from street booth near our hotel. There were many similar food booths with local lady, all selling order-to-make fresh sandwich. They would fried egg, chicken, bacon etc. on the iron plate right in front of you, also loaded lot of avocado, lattice and slice tomatoes into the long french bread. The sandwich was so huge that enough to share between us 2 persons. We ate this sandwich everyday at the lagoons, even bought one to take to the train.
The 2nd day, we rented a bike from a foreigner shop, which we deeply regretted, because this bike had flat tire twice. We took the bike to shop twice, ended up had to replace the inner tube at our own cost. For that, we wasted a lot of time and cost, not to mention when we returned because of the flat tire, a police stopped us because of one-way road, insisted to fine us, which of course went into his own pocket… It was such a bad luck day. We learnt that the local shops are way nicer than the foreigner shops there.
Anyway, 2nd day we still went to Blue Lagoon No.2, again relaxed under the roof all day, jumped and swim a little. It was so nice. Riding bike in Vang Vieng was not easy, because the road condition was really bad, we had to constantly watched out for holes. It was like riding mountain bike. Also, it was so hot and sunny during the day, and absolutely no shops or town on the way to the blue lagoons, so even half an hour felt long and made you tired.
However, the view during our drive was amazing. Vang Vieng is surrounded by many strange shaped mountains and farmlands. The countryside of Laos is definitely not something that we can see everyday. Also, the few local restaurants we found were good. We loved the local barbequed pork and soup noodles.
There were actually 6 blue lagoons and many more caves in Vang Vieng, but they were so far to travel by bike, and the roads towards there were bad, so we gave up. If you wish to visit all 6 blue lagoons, probably should consider to stay in Vang Vieng for one week or so.
We were totally satisfied after visiting 3 blue lagoons in Vang Vieng. Again, we took one hour train by LCR towards towards our last stop in Laos, also the biggest town, Vientiane.