The Triumph of Tubing: Vang Vieng

So we’re doing what Vang Vieng is famous for; Tubing. For those who haven’t heard of this anomaly let me explain. You hire a rubber ring, along with hundreds of eager ignorant young people clad in bikinis and souvenir high-vis t-shirts, and head in a tuk tuk to the river, upstream of VV. Everyone is deposited at the starting point and left to float the two hour stretch of river back to town, only to spice things up a bit the river bank is covered with bars blaring pop dance music, very keen to sell you copious amounts of alcohol in little plastic buckets and dishing out free whiskey shots. So we spend a few hours in the waterside bars drinking merrily and occasionally floating to a different bar, well one with a different name but same music and same buckets! It’s a little strange and I wonder how this juxtaposition of natural beauty and alcohol induced mental party place ever came to be. SPLASH, what’s that? A flailing body plummeting into the river from one of the many zip lines, slides and swings the bars have arranged for their inebriated patrons. Some of which have actually caused sad and notorious backpacker deaths. Drunk youths + rubber rings + river always seemed a recipe for trouble to me. With the sun disappearing behind the mountain the river air begins to chill, running out of time to make it back to town I abort the mission on the first day and sneak away in a tuk tuk back to town. On the second day we decide to try and float the whole distance back to town. At lunch time we stop at a bar where a dear old lady, who seems to be running the place single handed, is dishing out free chili fries with every drink. She looks so incredibly out of place it’s sweet, but she clearly isn’t intimidated by her drunken clientele. Around 4.15 after stopping at a bar where another old Lao lady is dancing around the youths very endearingly we grab our tubes and make a move for home. So we’re floating down the river, not really sure how long it’s going to take, so we’re paddling, paddling, paddling. . .the river meanders past the limestone cliffs, through the shaded valley and past a few more spartan bars. One and a half hours later of paddling and a couple of the girls give up, while Richard and I are determined to reach the bitter end. Two kilometers later and past a small herd of bathing buffalo we finally arrive back in Vang Vieng, hurrah! The evenings here are similar to the days with the same crowd continuing a never ending party. We head to the bucket bar where, you guessed it, free buckets before 10! Are you kidding it’s like the people of Vang Vieng have made it their mission to seriously intoxicate every single backpacker that comes this way, regardless of profit! All I can say is this whiskey must be very cheap!