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Life after death in Vang Vieng.

Posted: Sun Feb 12, 2017 7:26 am
by CEOCambodiaNews
Welcome to the new Vang Vieng, a kinder, gentler version of one of Southeast Asia's most infamous hotbeds of hedonism. Like a Hollywood starlet, this ramshackle blotch on a pictorial panorama of jagged mountains and the languid Nam Song River lived fast and died hard. It was knocked from its perch atop the list of must-do stops on the Banana Pancake Circuit nearly overnight.

Twenty-seven deaths of young Westerners in a year will do that...

http://www.bangkokpost.com/news/asean/1 ... vang-vieng

Re: Life after death in Vang Vieng.

Posted: Sun Feb 12, 2017 7:46 am
by phuketrichard
i went there once during the gap year crowd, opium shakes, joints and all night music an once after
MUCH preferred the after version,

Re: Life after death in Vang Vieng.

Posted: Thu Feb 16, 2017 12:20 am
by sigmoid
I concur.

I first arrived in Vang Vieng by van from Vientiane in 1998 or 99. I remember seeing the bars on the main road through town, just a few of them, but the music (Hotel California and that Scorpions song), flashing lights and tattoos crowd were all out of sync with the town. But, at the same time, you knew you were looking at the future.

Didn't have a chance to go again, starting hearing the reports, avoided the place, heard about the crackdown, so finally went back in 2013. Was glad to see that the town itself hadn't changed too drastically.


Went again in 2014 and then in late 2015 to find a massive hotel under construction in the center of town. Someone had spray-painted "TOURIST GO HOME" on the corrugated tin fence around the site.

Now, it sounds like it's ruined in a different way. Popular = overcrowded, overdeveloped, overpriced... That's the Law of Tourism.