Onto Vang Vieng and I'm already wishing I'd headed to the relatively untainted north. Vang Vieng is a party town primarily. The number one pastime for the travellers here is 'tubing' which involves sitting in a lorry inner tube, floating down the river from 3km upstream and getting wasted at the purpose-built bars along the way. To me it's just an 18-30s Laos booze cruise and most participants don't show the common courtesy of covering themselves up when they're back on dry land. Women in Laos, as in most of the surrounding countries, should have shoulders covered and knee-length lower garments when in public. It's respecting another culture, peolple, tradition and it's not as if you're being asked to wear a burkha! It's disgustingly disrespectful and just serves to demonstrate an ignorant and arrogant superior attitude to our hosts. I'm glad that I'm not the only one as I speak to more conscientious and considerate travellers I find that it's a shared view. It's terrible how often you feel guilty and ashamed of the actions perpertrated by those you consider 'your own people' against local people. Don't get me wrong, I was completely taken by the idea of drifting down a beautiful river looking at the stunning mountain scenery and enjoying the stupendous rope swings, zipwires and diving points but yet again the West has been allowed to push things too far in its hedonism.

Vang Vieng is still a worthwhile place. It boasts beautiful limestone-karst mountains on the oppostie bank of the river to where you can admire the incredible sunsets while reclining on bamboo stilt sundecks situated on an island which can only be reached by one of two rickety bamboo bridges. I manage to find a perect stilt bungalow at the quieter end of the island which is owned by a guesthouse on the mainland. Serene solitude is only broken here once when the manager comes to chat to me while I sit on the pontoon writing, smoking cigarettes and enjoying the bottle of good Laos whisky I've developed a penchant for. He partakes of a cigarette but wont indulge in the whisky. I've learnt never to underestimate the power of an American cigarette as in many foreign countries it creates alliances and friendships. It reminds me of Egypt when I offered the taxi driver one of my Marlboros on the way to Dahab after he'd plied me with his for a good half an hour. Instead of smoking it he grinned widely, gently placed it in his shirt pocket and saved for later as if it were a Monte Cristo. The guesthouse manager goes on to tell me in relatively good English how things really work in Vang Vieng. We have the background noise of children playing further downriver, the buzz of emerald dragonflies, the silent flutter of the odd hummingbird, an occasional frog croak and the distant strumming of the Israelis on their guitars up at the guesthouse. Vang Vieng in an effort to earn its backpacker destination stripes has lost something of its soul. The police chief has not been idle either in cashing in on the fact that locals, including the odd bar/restaurant or two, are facilitating a very "happy" stay for anybody who is interested. In these restaurants you're slipped face down a 'Special' Menu (see Facebook photos) but the owners clearly have an arrangment with the police chief and this is confirmed by a Lao girl at another bar. He's a very rich and corrupt man according to her, as are a lot of province governors. There is a very different arrangment with backpackers though. Whether they're bona fide police officers or not is still unclear to me but the man has a sizeable contingent of human sniffer dogs. At night and in the day they're everywhere, knowing exactly where people sneak off to. Even tubing on the river is not a safe place for a crafty smoke as they're stood plain-clothed on the banks, sometimes with binoculars. The penalty is significant - an on-the-spot fine of $500. The problem that this poses is that they are plain-clothes and they do not show ID. The Israelis tell me of an Australian who was staying in the guesthouse. He was smoking out of his bedroom window while they were walking through the guesthouse grounds and busted in on him. No ID shown, handcuffs waved at him only but he didn't believe they were police and refused to pay them. The result was a private beating until he did agree to pay up. This is no one-off. The guesthouse manager tells me that the chief owns a hotel. When guests arrive they're asked if they would like weed or anything else, shortly after delivery there's a knock at the door and guess who's there? The chief is a very rich guy.

My last full day in Vang Vieng and I rent a motorbike to go out to the caves and in search of the blue lagoon I've heard about. 'In search' is right because the map photocopy is terrible. Asking a local doesn't help much because of this and the fact that quite a few never seem to have seen a map of their town before. I've fallen in love with motorbikes for certain; riding along the foot-wide raised borders of paddy fields and tougher terrain than I would ever have tried if it wasn't borne of necessity. Riding a dirt road in the direction I have been pointed in I reach the river's edge and realise I've gone the wrong way but spot three men stood by a 4WD. Without a doubt they're cops waiting for tubers to make a wrong move, I ask them anyway and get only weak smiles until a woman races over and tells me, "Private land! You pay! You pay!" I say I'm lost and point at the lagoon on the map but I'm shooed away. As I start the bike again she sets her three dogs on me and on this terrain I'm no match to them and a bite to my calf sends me and the bike sprawling. Thanks to the fact that I'm wearing combats it doesn't even break the skin but the dogs are satisfied by the fact that I'm off or that the engine has been stopped and they trot back home. The woman has disappeared and the cops show limited concern so cursing I head back to the main road. The blue lagoon turns out to be over 20km the other way and stopping to take photos of some village kids I'm begged for pens which I stop for on the way back. They're snatched out of my hands with smiling nods and run back to their hut proudly waving their trophies to the adults. The blue lagoon is well worth it as there are so few people there and the water has an incredible hue that lives up to its name.