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You are here: Home / Archives for drugs

Vang Vieng, more than a happy menu

December 2, 2010 By Jillian

IMGP6561We’d been warned for months about Vang Vieng, a mecca for party-hard backpackers in Laos- complete with restaurants offering “happy” menus of drug spiked food and drinks. Two other bloggers told us that despite the awful things we’d heard it was a not miss and so we decided to chance it. After being completely disappointed with four thousand islands were were hesitant. With a wish and a prayer, we headed to Vang Vieng and somewhere between Britney Spears’ greatest hits and Jameraquai we found a reason to stay.

Nestled in the mountains, Vang Vieng has become a town with two faces, the party-hard scene and the adventure tourism scene.IMGP6548 For sure these two don’t normally mix, and as we walked down the street I was shocked at the number of backpackers staring blankly at Friends re-runs on restaurant TV’s. Annoyed, my mood didn’t change until we were sitting in out hotel room overlooking the river. The charm of the place began to grow on me and by the time we were rock climbing the next morning after a great night of sleep, some delicious western food and numerous fruit smoothies I was sold.

IMGP6536We spent a day mountain biking to various limestone caves in the surrounding hills. For sure they are heavily backpacked, but it was lovely floating through the underground river on a tube, that was until navy crawling through the cave I came face-to-face with a large brown spider. “Not dangerous, right?” I asked our guide in pigdin English. “heheh,” he replied. Thankfully there were no other suspicious creatures in the other caves.

IMGP6453It was sunset by the time we got to the “blue lagoon” cave. Up the steep cliff side of a mountain, the cave itself is actually home to a gold reclining buddha. Although there were a few other late afternoon tourists with us, it was really amazing to look up from the bottom of the cave to see the buddha on his platform with a small sliver of late afternoon sun. By the time we left we were the only tourists left on the site, which proved to be a problem because Danny had blown out his bike tire. Hitching a ride back to town in the dark was actually rather easy. The hard part was mountain biking back in the dark. Major kudos to Becka for attempting something she hates, at night, in the dark.IMGP6560

It is easy to see the negative impact of tourism in town. Sitting down to dinner one night we were presented with the “happy menu” of all sorts of food and drink that could be made with marijuana, mushrooms and opium. Never seen that before! Bar after bar has theater style seating facing televisions that play reruns of friends and family guy seemingly 24/7. It’s not pretty.

The long and the short of it was that Vang Vieng way exceeded our expectations. We were sad to go after only three days and with the ridiculously cheap and delicious fruit smoothies, fresh stuffed crepes and baguette sandwiches not to mention gorgeous scenery and good activities we could have stayed much longer despite the “happy” meals and reruns.

Filed Under: Asia & Oceania, Headline, Laos Tagged With: adventures, backpacking, drugs, relaxing, television

Always COCA-Cola

September 15, 2009 By Danny

It is absolutely amazing just how common Coca-Cola is. We have found it in ever city, in every country, in every restaurant, of our entire trip. We have found in on islands and every sidewalk vendor we’ve seen. When we traveled La Moskitia in Honduras we encountered people with virtually nothing from the outside world, except Coca-Cola cooled with a solar powered refrigerator.

I think the thing that most impresses me is just how many different sizes of Coke bottles we’ve found: 237ml, 250ml, 12oz, 295ml, 410ml, 16oz, 500ml, 600ml/20oz, 625ml, 1L, 1.325L, 1.5L, 2L, 2.25L, 2.5L, 3L, & 3.5L bottles. And I doubt that’s even all of it. Cokes supreme dominance is something that is completely remarkable. So completely does it dominate that even though every snack stand is filled with Frito-Lay (owned by Pepsi-Co) products they almost never have Pepsi. Always Coca-Cola.

Fitting that in Peru, home of Inca Cola…the beverage that Coke finally purchased a few years ago rather than continue with beverage wars…we really start to learn about the Coca leave itself. (By the way, Inca Kola is basically liquid bubble gum. So if you like bubble gum you will LOVE Inca Kola).

So the truth you ask? Rumors have always abounded about Coca-Cola´s relation with this controversial plant. In Peru and Bolivia we chew it to help with the altitude and even make a tea out of it. Dare we bring it back to the USA, we´ll likely be arrested…so how could Coca-Cola be pulling this off?

They won their court case way back at the start of the century and up to at least 1985 it had been confirmed that our fuzzy drink contains extract from the coca leaf.

Really though, this isn´t so important. Coca-Cola, if indeed its newer formula does still contain coca extract, only uses it for flavoring. The ironic thing here is that many people will tell you that coca is not a drug. These are probably the same people who are drinking it in tea and chewing it to help with the altitude. Of course its a drug if you use it for these purposes…but that doesn´t make it any more dangerous than the fix any of us gets from the caffeine in a cup a coffee or relief from some Tylenol.

The coca leaf itself is one of the world´s first plants to come under domestication, used in the Andes by indigenous peoples for millennium for a variety of purposes a brief google search will only begin to mention. It´s powers to heal and help are many but obviously its power to cause harm can be great as well.

Filed Under: Peru, South America Tagged With: drinks, drugs

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