Laos is home to some of the best climbing in the world. Vang Vieng is apparently the best place in Laos to do it. Set among the beautiful limestone mountains, we decided to give it a try. Well, rock climbing is not for sissies and it was pretty terrifying in my books and I came out with many bumps and bruises to prove it! On top of it all, my arms, bum, forearms, in fact my entire body was so sore the next the day!
This is where we went. We went went with Green Discovery which is where we did all our tours, mainly because they protect the environment but they give back to the community. There income is split like this: 35% goes to directly to villages for food, handicraft and trail maintenance.
20% goes to the town's people who are drivers and guides.
20% goes to Green Discovery for salaries etc
15% for government taxes and fees.
10% for training and development.
The Tuk Tuk drops you here...
You then catch a boat across the river!
One of the rock faces we climbed,
We started with a 45 minutes session on safety and the equipment and how it works etc and then Kyle had to go first!
He was so good at it! No problems what so ever!
Me on the other hand...not so good. A total nervous wreck! Plus this is me trying to hold the rope while Kyle climbed...lets just say that when I had to let him down the rock face it didn't go so well, so Appo (our instructor) did it from then on!
Look at the beautiful helmets they make you wear on your first climb! Super suave!
Absolutely incredible surroundings.
Looking out from within the climbing walls.
They made us climb 6 walls. Apparently they measure the difficulty in the climbs from 1 to 10 or something e.g level 4A, 5C, 6B etc
We climbed from levels 4A to 6A. 6A being near impossible!
Abseiling down!
My turn...well...I managed to talk and moan and screech and nearly have an aneurysm the whole way up.
It was so hard and so scary!
AAAAAAAAAAAAGGGGHHHHHHHH....
OMG OMG OMG - just don't look down!
Thank goodness we didn't have to climb this one!
This is Appo - he was our instructor.
More climbing...
Too scary...
This climb was 24m high... so not cool!
Just starting out - it doesn't seem so bad when you are only half a meter from the ground!
Serious concentration happening there!
Keep looking up!
I can't believe I actually managed to do it! Lucky I've got such big "guns" it's easy for me pull myself up. LOL
Coming down is even worse than going up, I was a wreck!
Holding on for dear life!
We stopped for lunch and chilled in a cute hut on the river.
Appo braaied for us
The view from the other side of the river.
Too gorgeous...did we really have to go back and do more climbing.
Chilling - HARD!
And then I started going all Nat Geo Wild again...
More Nat Geo Wild
Hut on the river...
This was lunch: Baguette; skewers with beef, onion, tomato and cucumber and egg fried rice in banana leaves with carrots and beans. It was really good!
These trees grow everywhere with these weird fruit on them.
We were really out in the bundus.
This is the weird fruit. When you open it, it smells disgusting and it has these sort of powdery seeds/fruit things inside and they eat them...
There is the bathroom in the middle of nowhere!
Last rounds for climbing then it was home time - back to the lovely bungalow on the water!
Look how far up he went.....
Last climb for the day and finally coming down!
More Nat Geo - there are creatures everywhere you look. In our bungalow we had geckos. You would never believe me if I told you how much noise they make. It sounds like a huge bird in your room! Pretty scary until you figure out whats making the sound!
No comments:
Post a Comment