Tubing is gooodddd

Trip Start May 08, 2008
1
19
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Trip End Ongoing


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Where I stayed
Grand View Guesthouse
(Vang Vieng hotels)

Flag of Lao Peoples Dem Rep  ,
Saturday, July 12, 2008

Vang Vieng may just be the most surreal place imaginable. Take Laos, a seriously poor country with a long history of turmoil and strife, a communist government and a typical conservative Buddhist population. Then consider this town of a few thousand where with little or no infrastructure, only a few properly paved roads which seems initially like a fairly typical town albeit with a few extra restaurants. Then take a long walk around it and you will find that all of the restaurants have the "happy menu" offering marijuana and mushrooms as pizza toppings, garlic bread and as shakes. There is opium also available as tea. All of the above are also available by the bag! It's fairly strange really.
 
In addition to this is the equally surreal tubing experience. The Mekong River flows nearby and right outside this previously quiet small town a series of bars has been established on the banks of the river, maybe 12 in all. The routine goes something like this: Drive 20 minutes out of town, throw inflated inner tube into river, jump on tube, float down river. Every 100-200m or so there is a bar where someone will through you a rope to pull you in. They'll give you free shots in some places, cheap beers in other places and then you're encouraged to try to swings! The swings are what really seems to make the tubing experience and most people do have a go and scream their way out over the river before letting go and dropping anything up to 15ft into the river. It was wet season while we were there so the river was bigger and deeper than normal, meaning that in dry season the drop is even bigger! Good fun indeed.
 
We arrived here from Phonsavan with Charlie, Jess, Sam and Djura, but Sam and Djura left before us and Charlie and Jess were staying after us. We ended up taking the tubing experience twice, the second time with Charlie and Jess. That was much more fun, obviously having some company makes it better, although the fact that Maria was up for the swings once she had an accomplice in Charlie helped too. By the time we reached the fifth or sixth bar even I was up for it, so with Maria I did a tandem jump, aiming to go in head first off a zip-line. Mission accomplished.
 
So yeah, good times there. We saw a lot of poseurs and all that there, some serious knobs too, but ignoring them helped a little. Eventually we had to leave town though and we decided to take the local transport instead of a bus. This was a van with a covered rear with benches on either side. Our driver was a little mental and the constant swerving and occasional bumps had me banging my head on the overhead bars several times. And this is the best road in the country? At least the journey was only three hours to the capital Vientiane.
 
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