In the Tubing in Vang Vieng

Well we finally tore ourselves away from the comforts of Grandma's house where they wait on us hand and foot unless we yell at them not to and laundry only costs 10 cents/kilo for wash, dry, and fold. We were lucky enough to catch the bus from there rather than having to backtrack to Vientiane. We stopped for one day in Vang Vieng, which is basically a tourist town on the river between Vientiane and Luang Prabang. The highlight of Vang Vieng is inner tubing on the river, or "In the Tubing" as they call it there. Basically it works as follows:

Follow the blond Canadian girl with the knit witch cap and fingerless Michael Jackson gloves and bikini who has covered herself in permanent marker ink numbers and is chanting "LET'S GO TUBING" and has been doing so all night long and well basically for the last week straight (apparently.) We think the tubing companies may actually have hired her for this purpose, but it's hard to know for sure. Anyway you get a number inked on your hand with permanent marker, climb in a tuk tuk and head down to the river.

Before getting in the river, you need to buy alcohol at the "Eco-drinking" bar where all proceeds go to the children of Laos. You then float a few yards down to the next bar where they have a rope swing on about a 20 foot platform which is extremely scary given that up to this point the water has only appeared to be about 1 foot deep. However after watching the acrobatics of the staff and the bellyflops of the other tourists and drinking a few beers or Lao Lao whisky buckets, you take the plunge. Then, repeat for the next dozen bars. Should you accidentally pass a bar, the staff will chant "Come-on come-on beer-lao beer-lao!" at you and throw you a line to pull you in. There are variations at each bar including the "flying foxes" which are zip lines that are even better for producing bellyflops than the swings. The culmination of bellyflops is a huge waterslide at one of the last bars. Unfortunately we failed to wait for the other drunken tourists on this one and so were not able to watch them and avoid bellyflopping ourselves. We're still hurting!



So we decided to beat the crowd for the rest of the float down the river. It is lucky we did because the rest of the float takes about 2 hours and the sun leaves the river quite early, resulting in some freezing tubers later on.

For nightlife in Vang Vieng, you have two choices: Friends or Family Guy. Basically all the bars have all the seasons of a single American TV show and play it endlessly. Unfortunately the Simpsons bar closed down. Luckily there is a 3rd choice for entertainment: the tubing girl, who gets back from tubing around 9pm and is still up chanting at 3am. Piss drunk. On the balcony across from our hotel window. With a big group of friends. But to be fair, she is the quietest of the bunch!

Now we are off to Luang Prabang by minibus!