Tuuuuuuuuuuubes!!
Trip Start
Jun 11, 2008
1
92
349
Trip End
May 14, 2009
Vang Vieng,
Lao Peoples Dem Rep
Sunday, August 31, 2008
UNFORTUNATELY, THEY HAVEN"T COME OUT TOO WELL!!
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Got up around 10ish and found a small café to get a bacon baguette. We then went to chill out on the beds at the Sakura Café. We decided to put a DVD on whilst we waited for Luca to turn up to go tubing. Amazingly, Luca is from Mapperley and is also a Forest fan! Yes we have another casualty of the insane forest fan disease.
Anyway, the film we put on was called "The Day After Tomorrow To Tomorrow"! Yeah, a follow up to the first one! .......It is PANTS!! It has to be the worst film I have seen in years! The graphics were just comically bad! The acting was worse than Eastenders! And the storyline.....what storyline!!
We managed to survive the film and head off for the less dangerous antic of tubing!
We picked up our rubber rings - the jokes were endless all day long. Ring this and ring that - it was childish, but I loved it!! I digress. We picked up our rings and headed by Tuk Tuk to the start point. We were told to be back by 6pm or we would lose 20000 kip of our deposit. By the time we left the first bar, we knew that was a gonner!
It had rained heavy in the night, so the river was flowing exceptionally fast today. We were told that if we didn't stop at any bars, the tubing journey would take about 1 hour (our journey turned out to take 7 hours)!
We only stopped off 5 times at bars.
Pigs CAN Fly!!
The first bar was called the "Smile Bar" and was less than 22 minutes into our tubing! Our rings had only had the chance to get slightly moist! Anyway, this bar had a big rope swing which you could go on and land in the fast flowing river. At it's maximum height, I think the drop is about 10 metres! When you land in the river, you have to swim fast to the side and grab the rope that is thrown to you or else the river will sweep you away and the next thing you know is that you will be in Cambodia!! No joke! This is a great laugh though and I fully enjoyed dropping from 10 metres up and smashing my face onto the muddy waters!Another note, we bought a disposable waterproof camera for the trip as we didn't want to kill our digital camera, therefore some of the pictures are a bit crappy.
At the bar I had beer lao of course, but at every bar you get free whiskey shots! Now, I'm not a fan of whiskey.....but when it's free.....well, I sampled a fair few!! I don't remember the names of the other bars, so I will refer to them as just - the next bar! At the next bar, coupled with the usual supply of beer lao and whiskey, was a zip slide into the river. This was ace and Lorna even went first! This was, again, a great laugh, and we were already in a group of about 10 people now. There was Luca, Sarah from Adelaide, Cole from Iowa, Vincent from Ireland, Jan from the Czech Republic, a dude from Argentina and a few others who's names escape me at the minute!
We all then dived into a mud bath and had a mud fight.
Let go fat lad!!
This was close to the ultimate dream of naked female mud wrestling - instead we had bikini-clad female mud wrestling - just as good though!! I can honestly say that I did actually look like a pig in sh*t!!At the next bar we had an International "soccer" match in the mud consisting of English, Irish, Polish, Aussie, American, Czech, Argentinean and Indian players!! This was dead funny, but do not worry, using my immense footballing skills, I did not let the English down and scored the first goal in a 1-1 draw!!
The next bar had yet another big swing. It was after 6pm now, so the 20000kip was gone and it was getting dark. We all did the swing though, of course! After swinging, we were having a few more whiskies and beer loa when Sarah asked Lorna what Morris Dancing was. Now normally an explanation of gay blokes prancing around with bells on their bodies, would have sufficed - normally! Lorna, however, had consumed many whiskies so tried to show an example of the dance. Now, the bar we were in was actually on stilts over the water and it had a bamboo floor. Shortly into Lorna's routine (if that's what you can call it), she jumped up, but didn't stop where the floor was! No, one leg when straight through the bamboo floor and she was wedged in the floor overhanging the river!! As a caring husband, I did the only sensible thing I could - absolutely p**sed myself and ordered another beer lao! Unfortunately, we had used all the photos on the disposable camera, so I couldn't get a souvenir of the incident.
Thar she blows!!
We left her wedged there for a few minutes - I was even going to start dangling food above her, but that might have been a bit too stupid - and then we set her free. She had a few grazes on her leg, but she had been laughing whilst wedged, so we knew she was OK.By now it was about 7pm and pitch black, and we still had to float down the river for another 20mins in the dark!! It seriously is pitch black as well, no lights, just water and rocks and reeds! The thing was, if we missed our get off point, this river goes right out to the ocean in VIETNAM! And our visas have run out for Vietnam!! We basically had to try and look out for the small island which we knew was near where to get off. I must admit that a bit of common sense then came into play, because the 8 of us who were left on the river joined together holding each others tubes and floated down the river like a big raft. (We seriously were the last people on the river as it was about 7.30pm).
Anyway, I'm pleased to say we saw our island, and there were also some kids in the river who gave us a hand with our tubes. We had made it. We handed our tubes in at about 8pm!
After a well earned shower, we found a restaurant which did Sunday dinners, so Lorna got her chicken dinner with Yorkshire pudding - I had peppered steak!
Then it was off to Jaidees bar (as in JD's) for more music & beer lao and to meet up with our fellow tubers. They also had the footy on the tele - great bar!!
It was a late night before the return to our guesthouse!
