Riding in the morning
Today was going to play host to a new experience…floating in a hot air balloon. I’d been keen for a long time to go up in a hot air balloon, but the opportunity never arose. Since we were in town, apparently flying in the hot air balloon was quite popular, so we were all on board with it. The hot air balloon was later in the evening, to catch sunset. Our morning began with breakfast, and then renting some bicycles from next door. We planned to visit some nearby lagoons, so we went next door to hire some mountain bikes.
The 3 of us set off on our bikes, in the direction of the lagoons out of town. My bike was downright useless on flat or descending roads, no connection to the gears whatsoever. Whilst we were en route to the lagoon, we saw a turn off to a viewpoint, so we thought we’d go and see this. As ever in Laos, we had to pay to see the viewpoint. It was only 10,000 kip, but it’s important to know you’ll have to almost always pay to see something in Laos. Don’t forget your money!
The exhausting climb
I’d like to mention that the weather was absolutely baking us, it was incredibly hot. They always say, do the strenuous activities outside of the hours when it’s hottest (around 11am-4pm or so). What do we end up doing, every single time? Right at the day’s hottest, we decide to climb a steep hill/mountain to get to a viewpoint. Steps, steps, and more bloody steps. Every pore on my body was spurting sweat out and a crazy rate. I only had my bottle which was about 550ml. I had to ration my water to the limits. Along the path up, there were a few break areas, thank god. Mischa and Mat moved on ahead, whilst I took it at my own pace, which was still exhausting.
I soon made it to the top viewpoint, and to be honest, the view was amazing. As tough as it was climbing a hill on the surface of the Sun, it was well worth it. Not only could we see the valleys and mountains around us, but we could also see settlements and Vang Vieng all set out in the distance. It was a rather unique sight to behold. We tried to cool down the best we could, but that wasn’t happening anytime soon. When we’d had our fill, we decided to descend and continue our bike ride in the inferno.
Cooling off
We resumed our ride to the lagoon, and Mat and I were topless at this point, to the horror of the locals I’m sure. Once again, we had to pay to get into the area of the lagoon, which was another 10,000 kip. This place was very populated, there were loads of vehicles, and even more people playing in the lagoon. To be honest, it was smaller than I was expecting, more of a glorified pond to be honest. Nevertheless, once Mat and I had taken a dip, it was the most refreshing feeling I’d felt in a long time. The water was clear, blue, and very cool. There were plenty of large fish, but at this point I didn’t even care.
There was a large tree at one end of the lagoon which had two large branches growing out, both of which you could jump from. The lower branch was 2 metres, and the higher branch was 5 metres. There was a staircase cut into the tree to get to the top. Mat and I had a few goes each at the 5 metre jump, as well as some of the swings nearby. The whole crowd kept coming together when someone had cold feet about jumping, it was dead good and supportive. After we’d had our fill of swimming, we returned to Mischa, dried off, and got some grub. We then headed back to town for the hot air balloon. My bike was really awful, except for 1 hill which allowed me to catch up with the others. For more info about the Blue Lagoon, check out this in-depth article.
We're floating in the air
After a long, tiresome bike ride home, we cooled off and changed, getting ready for our transport to the balloon. The tuk tuk collected us at the meeting time, and took us to pick up a few others, and then dropped us off at a large, barren field. In the middle of the field was the biggest balloon I’d ever seen, with the brightest colours imaginable. It took a while to get in the air and the basket upright, but once it was, we all jumped in. The ascent was slow but steady; I thought I might feel dizzy from the height, but I was fine. We couldn’t go extremely high because of a breeze, but the views were simply awesome. Especially because it was sunset, we could see huge, sprawling shadows slowly encompassing the town, whilst the far side of town was lit up in the Sun’s warm embrace.
One of my favourite parts was waving to the kids below, who were all dead excited to see me up there, waving back at me. The ride lasted for around half an hour, but it felt like 5 minutes to me. The hot air balloon kept ascending and descending. Eventually we came in for landing, in another field. We were able to get our photo taken on top of the basket as it was laid on its side (check that photo here). Once we returned to the hostel, we went out for some dinner. It was a good end to an action packed day. We also booked a bus to Thakek for tomorrow. When we returned to the hostel, we chilled, played some cards, and then I phoned Elva for a couple of hours. A very good and productive day.
