Most people who go to Vang Vieng will tell you that the best river trip around is the all too famous tubing trip — or should I say drunken tubing trip.  And I won’t argue.  The Vang Vieng River mission is probably one of the most fun things you’ll ever do in your lifetime, even if you’re a hard-core backpacker who has seen it all.

But if there’s one thing that Laos is not lacking, it’s river trips.  Whether you like white water rafting that turns your stomach, drunken tubing, shredding upstream on the back of an elephant, or the relaxing crawl of a river through some of the most beautiful mountains you’ve ever seen in your life, it’s waiting in Laos.

You’re probably making your way through northern Laos the same route that all the backpackers take — starting with the Mekong slow boat, making your way through Luang Prabang, partying your way through Vang Vieng, and emerging in Vientiane like somebody who just walked through a different universe.  But there is one more leg of that journey most people skip.  And it’s just as good of a river trip as any.

What I did when I wandered through the northern Laos Mountains was end the trip with some good hard paddling.  Talk with one of the travel agencies and arrange a kayaking trip from the Vang Vieng to Vientiane.

Depending upon the time of year that you make the mission, it can be pretty wild or, if you go in the dry season when the rivers are low, it’s not much more than relaxing.  Although, in a kayak, realaxing does mean a lot of arm work.

Even in the dry season, you get your share of rapids and tipping over along the way.  I was the only person on the trip to have my own kayak — mostly kayaks are two-person– and the single kayaks are just a little unstable.  I think I flipped mine about five or six times.  Okay, I was the clumsiest guy on the river…

About halfway they stopped and the guides cooked us a meal on the rocks.  Then it was back to the river again.  At another point they stopped and let us jump off of cliffs into the deep water.  Some of the climbing looked a little treacherous, and this isn’t the kind of thing for everybody, but for those who do it was well worth the jump—or a few jumps.

Nothing like cliff-jumping into a river in the mountains of Laos to make you say to yourself, “How the hell did I end up here again?”

In the wet season, when the river is nice and full, and quite a bit hairier, I’ve heard you can paddle all the way to Vientiane.  But when I went it was rather dry, and we stopped about an hour’s drive away.  In the end, however, the drive was one of the best parts of the trip.

The sangteaw they took us in was acting as a taxi service, picking up locals along the way.  Me and one girl from Australia stood on the back and let everybody else inside, and we just took in the mountain views.

Laos hasn’t been covered as extensively as Thailand.  It’s the kind of place where people still wave just because you have a white face.  They’re all smiling, and they mean it.  We were like five year old kids again.  Just grinning, waving, and laughing like idiots.

As we made our way down the dirt roads, they turned to pitted asphalt, and a sun like a fiery orange ball sank behind the peaks.  We looked out over rolling plains with patches of palm trees and mountains that went as far as the eye could see.  The orange ball disappeared and nighttime emerged as we rolled into what is probably the quietest capital in the world.

Not a bad river trip at all.