Laos town known for drunkenness and tourist deaths cleans up its act
The town of Vang Vieng in Laos was once synonymous with backpacker excess, but now offers adventure activities that make the most of its stunning location I want us to preserve the mountains of Vang Vieng, the river and the culture for the future,” Thanongsi Solangkoun told me as I sipped mulberry wine at his organic restaurant on the Nam Song river in Laos. Thanongsi, affectionately known as Mr T, produces some three tonnes of mulberries every year, 80 litres of goat’s milk a week, plus avocados, papayas and mangoes at his organic Lao Farm (dorm beds from £3, private rooms and mud huts from £13), 2½ miles north of Vang Vieng town. He also runs a restaurant, a guesthouse, a cooking school, a volunteer programme, and a local education project on the farm. But when he set up the project in 1996, after quitting his government forestry job, he unwittingly launched a trend that would earn Vang Vieng – a higgledy-piggledy town on the pea-green river with a backdrop of soaring limestone mount...