Agony and Ecstacy in Vang Veing
Trip Start
Sep 13, 2006
1
10
178
Trip End
May 08, 2008
Vang Veing,
Lao Peoples Dem Rep
Monday, October 9, 2006
alice. kieran. me. james and ian
. all the fun kinda stuff.Anyway the Wednesday morning, Ian and myself went rock climbing with a local guide.. Adam who was really cool. So we set off by tractor to some rice fields walked through them and reached these mountains on the edge of town with verticle drops. Awsome looking. So we did several differnt routes up and down the cliff faces and finished up in the afternoon when physically too bolloxed to do any more climbs.
Tractor then back to town met up with the other 4 who skipped the climbing and we rented our tubes. Its sunny, the water is warm pull in at the first bar and straight up the rope swings and zip wires jumping into the river, im absolutley loving this... still cant get over that its legal.. Mind boggles that they let pissed people float down a big ass river in a tube with no life jackets going from bar to bar and jumpin off swings and ropes. And if your tipple is magic mushrooms or smoking the funny stuff then they are happy to sell you some of that stuff at the bars too, but oviously it doesnt appear on any printed menu. Ian and myself once again are up and down these zip wires and swings like yo yo's couldnt get enough. Now at the third bar the biggest and best jump is and i have no idea how many times i went on this but if the bruise's on my shoulder and legs and the swelling on my face are anything to go by it was a lot. (may have hit the water awkwardly a few times trying to do tumbleturns in mid air about 5-6 metres above the water)...lol
Beautiful scenary on the Nam Song river
. Now its geting late in the day it gets dark here at 6 and we had spent ages at this 3rd bar so off we set.. I should mention at this stage that there is a good chance you will loose all your posessions doing this tubeing. Kieran had already lost one flip flop, james lost his watch. As were floating from the third bar i fall off my tube...shite cos i had both mine and Ians shades on my head...lost em both...feck it got mine for about 2 chuid in bangkok cos i forgot me good ones in dublin, so no worries. But i managed to find ians floating near the surface along with my suncream that kept floating out of me pocket. So first reaction is to check to see if i lost anything else. still got flip flops, money is still in the velcro pocket and then my heart sank cos my Grandads chain since i have had since i was 15 was gone from my neck. It has never fallen off before and i can just picture now that it must have fallen off doing one of the jumps and i know that this river is so big and deep that i have got no chance of finding it. Its the one material posession i had that i would naver want to loose, so i was pretty much devestated. We hit some more bars on the river that nite before geting back to the town at 7 that nite, the last hour we spent floating in pitch dark which was pretty crazy seen as you dont exactly know how far more there is to float or where to stop.The six of us dropped the tubes off, had to run back to Kieran with a spare flip flop seen as the poor guy could barely walk the half mile back on the dirt track
cliff we climbed
. Went out to dinner that nite and all the bars here are open, no doors or shutters on them at nite..weird.. low crime me thinks. And all the bars are full of Tv's that play Friends or the simpsons all day long on repeat. So its definitley a place you couldnt get bored with so much to do or else just sit on ur ass and watch Tv. The guys bought me a necklace as a present and gave it to me which was really nice of them. thank you. Thursday morning, Kieran, alice and James left for Vietiane. Ian was supposed to leave to but like me was addicted to this tubeing craic and the crazy jumps you could do. So the two of us set off early with the tubes and same again. Same Same again alrite, now i was a bit stiff and sore from yesterdays antics and rock climbing. And on the first jump the next day crack hit the water and i knew i had fecked up me poxy neck again.. happens every now and then, muscle spasm in the neck. Fuck it and carried on floating again but was sensible to do no more jumps. Anyway i get back to town and decide i will see if i can find a chiroprater to pop my neck back in place. I went to a pharmacy to get some anti inflamatory tablets and see if she knew of a chiroprater. So she pointed me to hospital. They might know in there. No one spoke english so they pushed me in to see a doctor who also had bugger all english and i only have about 6 or 7 words in Laos and half of them are swear words (no use here). Anyway eventually i conveyed my problem, kinda obvious cos i cant turn me head
climbing
. And he eventually tells me no chiropracter in the town, but he wrote me out a nice prescription and checked me neck out anyway... sound.. Visit to doctor plus the prescription cost me about 60 cents. I knew i was wasting me money on health insurance when stuff is that cheap.So i had to Veg in vang veing for another few days not able to tube anymore or go kayaking..feck it anyway. By now it was only me and dave left and we headed for the capitol Vientaine on saturday along with a few others we met in our travels in Laos.. You kind of tend to keep meeting the same people from town to town cos the tourist trail is so popular. So yep definitley a case of Agony and Ecstacy on the Nam Song river in Vang Veing.
