The art of travelling

Vang Vieng in Laos is somewhere that I have scorned for a long time as a place where tourism has gone wrong and been very culturally damaging.

I was drawn to it in the end because of its natural beauty and the fact it was a good place to stop as I headed north. While here it's impossible not to contemplate the reasons why people travel and what they hope to achieve from it. Ok, some people are not contemplating that as they are too busy getting off their face on Tramadol or Valium, or both, which is the latest craze in the town apparently. I was staggered and quite saddened to hear it.

The best thing about being here was cycling away from town, in the rain and mud, coming across kids covering their school books with banana leaves, and experiencing the beauty of the dramatic landscape.

That made it easier later to hear backpackers say they 'would take a bullet' for someone they'd known for 48 hours, 47 of which had been spent on Tramadol.

I wasn't the oldest around, but definitely one of them. I became matey with some backpackers and we went to a nightclub. When a good song from about 2006 came on, I got excited and started dancing. Then I realised everyone was finishing primary school at about that time. Someone did ask one of my mates 'what the hell is a 31-year old doing here?' I was about to ask the same thing...

Vang Vieng best summed up as simultaneously beautiful, comical and tragic.