Vang Vieng, Laos
Packrafts vs
Tipsy Tubers
An Itiwit packraft on the Nam Song, communist flags on rainbow bridges, hot air balloons over karst peaks, and a pub crawl that ended with a Beerlao label on someone’s forehead.
Night One
Riverside Dinner & Beerlao
Vang Vieng sits in a bend of the Nam Song River, ringed by karst limestone towers that look like they were drawn by someone who’d never seen a real mountain. We arrived at dusk and did what everyone does first: found a riverside restaurant, ordered laap and sticky rice, and cracked open the Beerlao.
The town has a complicated reputation. In the early 2000s it was Southeast Asia’s most notorious backpacker party zone — a place where twenty-somethings floated down the river on inner tubes, stopping at bamboo bars to drink buckets of whisky. By 2012, after 27 tourists died in a single year from drowning and drug-related incidents, the Lao government shut most of it down. The bars were demolished. The tubing was tamed. Vang Vieng was supposed to become an adventure tourism destination.
It did. Sort of. The tubing came back — gentler, with life jackets and fewer bars. But so did packrafters, rock climbers, hot air balloons, and hikers. We were here for the packrafting. The tubers were here for the buckets.
On the Water
Packrafting the Nam Song
The Nam Song is not the Nam Ou. Where the Ou runs remote and wild through the highlands of Phongsaly province, the Song is a tamer river — wide, slow, and lined with bars and guesthouses. But paddle it in a packraft and you see a different side. The karst cliffs rise straight from the water. Buffalo graze on the banks. And every hundred metres, you pass another group of tubers drifting in the opposite direction, holding Beerlao cans above their heads.
We launched from a spot upstream where the river still feels untouched. Within minutes, local children had surrounded the packraft on the riverbank, poking at the inflatable hull and trying to work out how a boat could fold into a backpack. The Itiwit packraft is always a conversation starter in Laos — nobody has seen one before.
Riverside
The Beerlao Ice Bucket
There is a particular joy in pulling your packraft onto a sandy bank, walking up three steps to a bamboo platform, and ordering a Beerlao in an ice bucket. The brewery was founded in 1973 as a joint venture with the French — one of the few things France left behind in Laos that people actually wanted to keep. At roughly 5,000 kip (20p) a bottle from a shop, or 15,000 kip (60p) at a riverside bar, it is possibly the world’s best value lager.
Downriver
Packraft Meets Tipsy Tubers
The tubing scene in Vang Vieng is a rite of passage for every backpacker on the Southeast Asia circuit. You rent an inner tube for about 55,000 kip, a tuk-tuk drops you upstream, and you float four kilometres back to town, stopping at riverside bars along the way. Before the 2012 crackdown, there were dozens of bars with rope swings, slides, and zip lines — and virtually no safety oversight. The death toll was staggering.
Today’s version is calmer but still chaotic. Groups of tubers link arms, drift sideways, and attempt to drink Beerlao without capsizing. In a packraft, you sit lower and move faster. We paddled through entire flotillas of tubers who cheered, waved, and offered us drinks as we passed. The contrast was absurd: us in helmets and life jackets with dry bags; them in bikinis holding buckets of Lao-Lao whisky.
Crossing Over
Rainbow Bridges & Red Flags
Vang Vieng’s suspension bridges are Instagram catnip — narrow, wobbly, painted in rainbow colours, and draped with flags. But look closer at those flags. Alongside the red-white-blue of the Lao national flag, you’ll spot the hammer and sickle of the Lao People’s Revolutionary Party. Laos is one of just five remaining communist states in the world, alongside China, Vietnam, Cuba, and North Korea. The party has ruled since 1975 and the flags are everywhere — on bridges, government buildings, and village halls.
From the bridge, you watch longboats motor through the cables below, fishermen cast nets from the rocks, and the karst mountains stack up in every direction. It is surreally beautiful. And then you look down and see a sunken longboat wedged in the rocks — a reminder that the river takes as well as gives.
Sunset
Balloons Over the Karsts
Hot air ballooning came to Vang Vieng relatively recently, and it has become one of the town’s defining images. Every evening around 5pm, a dozen colourful balloons rise from a dusty field on the edge of town and drift across the karst skyline. Some carry tourists at $90 a ride. Others are tethered for photo ops. All of them look extraordinary against the sunset.
We watched from the street as a balloon from Oasis Tour drifted so low over the main road that you could read the registration number — RDPL, the Lao aviation prefix. Paragliders swooped alongside them. The Beerlao shop sign glowed in the foreground. It was the most Vang Vieng moment imaginable: ancient geology, modern tourism, and beer advertising, all in one frame.
After Dark
The Vang Vieng Pub Crawl
Vang Vieng’s nightlife runs on a simple formula: neon lights, cheap beer, and an international crowd united by the shared experience of having floated down a river in their underwear that afternoon. The pub crawl starts at the main strip, where bars compete with towers of Beerlao — three-litre dispensers that sit on your table like a brass trophy.
We ended up at a place that calls itself various things depending on the sign you read: Back Again, WTF, or simply Gary’s. Gary is English, shirtless, and has been running dive bars in Vang Vieng long enough to have memorabilia from before the crackdown. His bar sits next to a temple — hence the handwritten sign on the wall: “Keep Quiet, Respect the Temple.” The irony was not lost on anyone.
Day Three
Nam Xay Viewpoint
Nam Xay is one of Vang Vieng’s karst peaks — a jagged limestone tower that rises 300 metres above the rice paddies. You can hike it, or you can ride a motorbike to the top. We did both. The trail passes through a cave, scrambles over razor-sharp rocks, and emerges at a summit marked by a Laos flag and, improbably, a motorcycle. Someone rode it up there. The how is unclear. The why is obvious: the view.
From the top, the Vang Vieng valley unfolds in every direction. Rice paddies glow green between the karsts. The Nam Song winds through town. Hot air balloons dot the evening sky. It is the kind of view that makes you understand why people come here — and why they stay.
Finale
Beerlao Label on the Forehead
Every pub crawl has a moment that defines it. Ours came when someone peeled the label off a Beerlao bottle and stuck it to their forehead. It stayed there for the rest of the night. It was still there at breakfast. If Vang Vieng had a coat of arms, it would be a Beerlao label on a sunburnt forehead, flanked by inner tubes, with the motto: “We came for the caves.”
