Tubing in Vang Vieng

We nearly decided to not do the tubing thing, but after meeting Rob and Megan in Laung Prabang they made us feel so boring that we just had to do it.

We all met up at the hi-speed Internet shop and walked to the tubing place, picked up our tubes and all crammed into the tuk tuk with four big rubber inner tubes hanging off the back, and off we went, but not before the driver asked El and I to be as far forward as possible to counter weight of the tubes. LOL I had visions of us being thrown back out of the tuk tuk, or it doing wheelies the whole way to the start of the tubing.

The start was from an organic farm. El and I had already had breakfast in their town cafe, my god mulberries tea and pancakes and the milkshake (all mulberries) were very very nice. Before we set off we loaded up all our stuff, money and clothes into the dry bag and we were off, the river was looking very very fast. The guy in the cafe told us that the hills must have had a lot of rain in the last few days, as the river fills up and empties quite fast. We only had about 5 minutes on the water when the first swing and bar comes into view, lol and all the way down the river you could see them...


The night before we all went for a drink on a island in the river at the end of the tubing, with a special menu in two parts, ganja and opium, milkshakes or spliffs, anyway about 8:30pm (dark) a guy rocks up to us all wet carring a tube, called Carmel from Israel. He sits down and asked us were he is? and what time it is? which country are we from? and is this the end of the tubing? and which side of the river is the town? he takes this all in tells us he is very drunk and then is silent for a few second... he then asks us all the same question again in the same order, were he is? and what time it is? which country are we from? and is this the end of the tubing? and which side of the river is the town?. Omg I though how many people die on this river every day!!!!

Back to the start, we rock up to the bar and have our first drink and a swing (El was unsure of the swing, but she did it in the end, well done her), and just before we left our first shot of FREE lao lao (local brewed hell fire) and off we went to the next bar, all of 20 metres down the river, repeat about 5 times and a few buckets and lao lao later and it was us that swam out of the river at 7pm in the dark asking people where we were. The only thing I remember is thinking 'I am sure I am more drunk than that guy last night, omg how am I going to get back to the hotel room'?

Both El and I have no idea how we got back to the hotel alive and amazingly the only thing we lost was El's sunglasses. The next day we watched back-to-back "Friends" episodes in a bar for around 8 hours and only moved at 6:30pm after having breakfast / second breakfast and lunch there and then met up with Rob and Megan and watched a film, 40 year old virgin, funny as hell. We felt bad about wasting a day but its the thing you do in Laos, so what can you do?.

Thanks to Megan and Rob for making it a really fun day, maybe see you in the south?