Vang Vieng - Tubing

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  Vang Vieng, Lao Peoples Dem Rep
Tuesday, September 9, 2008

Arrived in Vang Vieng and were dropped off in the very very southern end of town by some very pretty bungalows on the river. They were only 100,000 Kip so we decided to stay there rather than walking all the way to  town with our bags. All we knew about Vang Vieng when we got here is that it is famous for it's tubing.
 
  Tubing is THE thing to do here. It's a great way to spend a day. It was too late to go on our first day here so we went on our second. We hired our tubes and got taken with a load of other people about 5km north of town. We got to the river, jumped in our tubes and off we went. The trip back to town takes about 2 hours without stops. There are however, lots of stops. Every couple of hundred yards there's a bar. Guys with big long bamboo poles fish you out of the river as you go past and drag you to shore.  Once there you buy yourself some drinks (yes they have buckets in Lao) and have a go on some of their rope swings and zip lines

Pancake in a hammock

. We had a great time. Admittedly that second bucket may have been a bad idea but it seemed like a good idea at the time.
 
It really is like nothing I have ever experienced. On our first day there were over 150 people doing the same thing and I think we managed to speak to just about all of them. Everybody is at least slightly tipsy and very friendly on the river. We met a huge amount of people but to be honest the only ones I remember are Tony and Karen from Sydney. The rest is lost in a blurry buckety haze.
 
The mud wrestling/volleyball was a lot of laughs. Even moving an inch to go for a ball guaranteed yourself a face full of mud. The rope swings were scary as hell and I still have the bruises to prove how high up they were. The zip lines were class though. Myself and Christen were able to go at the same time and it really was the only way of getting remotely clean after the volleyball.
 
Along the way tubers told each other stories about other people who'd gone tubing before us. We solemnly swore not to make their mistakes. "Only 1 bucket" we said, "We have to be back before dark" we said. Sadly for all our good intentions we managed to fail miserably at following the good advice

Tubers landing

. Somewhere around bar 4 there was another bucket. Somewhere around bar 5 the sun suddenly dropped out of the sky and it was dark.
"Bugger" we said, so we hopped into our tubes and headed off downriver. We started off as a little raft of 4 people (Me, Christen, Tony and Karen) hanging on to each other and wondering how far the end was. Somewhere along the way we picked up another 4 stragglers who were out on the river alone and wanted some company on the way back.
Somehow though we ended up taking the wrong fork in the river (go right not left) and sailed past the official tubing stop on the other side of the island. God knows where we would have ended up if a local 8-year-old called Jimmy handed appeared from nowhere and dragged us to shore. We made it back to town non-the worse for the wear. Well except from the fact that we looked like mud people after climbing up the riverbank in the dark.
 
All in all tubing is a LOT of fun and I can't wait to do it again. We're headed for Luang Prabang tomorrow for a few days. After that we're back here for more tubing. I guess I'll write about the rest of our time in Vang Vieng then.

Post your own travel photos for friends and family More Pictures

mmmm pancake	view from pancake hammock	sunset	sunset bar hammocks
tubing in to the cave	somehow we squeezed in	my super manly pink hog	caving
buddha in the cave	1-caving	big cave caving	the aftermath
cold, wet and hungry	matches her outfit	random cow	Vang Vieng
1-Vang Vieng	2-Vang Vieng	3-Vang Vieng	4-Vang Vieng
5-Vang Vieng	6-Vang Vieng

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