Kayaking to Vientiane

We kayaked to Vientiane from Vang Vieng. We had the option of a three hour bus trip or to kayak part of the way and drive the rest. It still amounted to three hours on the bumpy roads though. The kayaking was good. This is probably the most dangerous trip I’ve done so far. Not really because of what we were doing, but in terms of the instruction. This consisted of five minutes of ‘this is how you hold a paddle, make sure you have your life jacket on’ and the guide waving his arms about in a paddling motion and that was about it.

After about an hour’s paddling we got to the rapids and were told they were Grade Two. Whatever they were they looked very dodgy. Our guide tried as best he could to explain how to get through them safely, which proved pretty confusing as he would shout “left” when he really meant right and throw stones in the rough direction of where to aim for. We kind of understood though. Abby was the only one in our group to make it through without capsizing. I on the other hand got about half way down, then the world turned upside down. When I got washed out of the rapids, I kind of expected one of our guides to either be there or motion for where to go, instead I just got washed downstream and eventually swam towards the shore. All pretty exciting.