Vang Vieng
Trip Start
Apr 15, 2009
1
60
61
Trip End
Jun 09, 2010
Vang Vieng, Lao Peoples Dem Rep
Sunday, June 6, 2010
We had heard about tubing a lot from people throughout our travels and were really looking forward to it, although also slightly scared! The day we arrived in Vang Vieng it was absolutely chucking it down, and thankfully too late to go tubing anyway so we planned to go the next day. The centre of Vang Vieng was dead because everyone was out tubing, apart from the odd slob recovering from a hangover. All the bars in Vang Vieng either show continuous episodes of Friends or Family Guy which must be torture for the locals but its amazing for the travellers passing through who need hangover chilling time! As I love Friends, it's pretty obvious that we went for food in one of the bars showing Friends and then we had a few bottles of Beerlao - the best beer in Asia which we had discovered in Luang Prabang. Then as the night progressed we went to some more livelier bars and enjoyed another Asian backpacking tradition...buckets!! This time it was vodka not whiskey thank god!
The next day, after sleeping off slight hangovers we went down to the tubing shop, hired our tube and got a truck ride to the starting point. The first thing you notice is the amazing scenery and back drop to the river. And then you notice several makeshift wooden bars full of young travellers, drinking and dancing - it would have been rude not to have a drink, so we did! It was about 2pm in the afternoon, the sun was beating down but the atmosphere was that of midnight in a funky nightclub! The first bar had a huge rope swing about 10 metres above the river and we watched whilst people launched off it, sometimes even doing somersaults in to the river and we realised why tubing was renowned for being so dangerous! After a couple of cans of Beerlao, and having seen at least ten people survive the drop I was feeling brave and gave it a go. I started to regret it when he got to the top of the swing but there was no going back and I got a great buzz afterwards.
We then floated on down to the next bar and after a few more Beerlao we both decided to have a go at the zip wires. On Corinne's first go though, she held on for too long, hit the snapping point which flipped her upside down and she went head first into the river! Thankfully she was alright (apart from some seriously bright red skin from where she smacked in to the river!) so it was ok for me to laugh and I managed to get a great photo of it! Bonus! She was black and blue for the next two weeks though - I have never seen bruises like it!
This shook her up quite a bit and for the rest of the day she went nowhere near another zip wire!
The next few hours basically consisted of us drinking lots, making friends with randomns, partaking in drinking games, covering our bodies in yellow and blue ink (god knows why), floating down the river and generally having an amazing time! However, it seems we had got a bit carried away and the sun had started to set, and we were still miles away from the tubing shop where we were supposed to return our tubes. Someone had stolen one of our tubes as well meaning that we had lost the deposit and had to share a tube for the ride home. Corinne started to really sh*t herself at this point as it was pitch black, we had lost all our new friends and apart from the odd person floating by, there was noone around for miles! We were supposed to return the tube by 6pm and I think it was actually 9pm when we eventually made it back!
As we were still drunk we didn't let this drama phase us and after a quick shower, we were back out in town meeting up with our new mates and having a few more Beerlao! It was an amazing, fun, scary, crazy day and we loved it. Sadly we didn't have enough time to do it again as we had to make our way back to Bangkok ready for our flight home in a few days.
Before we left Vang Vieng we bought souvenir tubing vests and got some cash out for the next few days...big mistake! It turns out the Laos Kip is completely useless in any other country than Laos and exchanging it is near impossible. We may as well have got a £50 note and just burnt it!
