Vang Vieng is a small town in central Laos famous for tubing on the river. We didn't actually know what tubing down the river meant. We do now and it involves nearly naked 20 year olds and buckets of vodka. Not what we were expecting in sleepy, sensitive, overlooked Laos.
We arrive in town, get a bungalow by the river in the shadow of the weirdly shaped karst limestone mountains and go into town to investigate whether we go tubing. We find out that it is floating down the gentle river on a large inner tube and there are bars along the river where you can stop for a drink. All well and good. We sign up for a day of this including caving, not that we know what caving is yet.
We take a tuk-tuk about 20km out of town with a dozen others, the usual united nations of backpackers. We get into a stream at the base of one of the limestone mountains, sit in our inner tubes (one each) and use a rope to drag ourselves under the mountains through a series of tunnels and caves for an hour. Some of us are wearing head torches so we can see in the pitch black darkness. The water is not deep and in some places we are ducking to not hit our heads on the dripping stalactites. This is actually fun and not claustophrobic. We giggle our way through paddling like frogs in places where there is no rope. If this was anywhere else there would be hours of safety precautions but here we leap in and everyone makes it back outside again.
After lunch we hit the tubes on the river. We get in and our told to stop at the first bar but we are not told how to stop. This is where the fun starts.
The first bar is only 20m down the river, the music is pulsating and people are paryting like its 1999. We stop by having water bottles thrown at us on the end of ropes. We catch the rope and are hauled in. The bar is a large precarious bamboo platform serving 1 dollar buckets of vodka. There are about 50 people (average age 20-25), all happily smashed, dancing and diving into the water. If you are 3 girls you get a bucket of vodka free.
We feel as if we have landed in a reality show akin to Temptation Island. What is ironic is that one of our party is a European director for "Beauty and the Geek". Lots of material here for a new show. We decide that it's sink or swim and so join in the dancing and shrieking at the people throwing themselves into the river off of "flying foxes" (pulleys on ropes) and unstable looking diving towers. After about an hour we are back in the river (feeling quite merry but surreal at this point) heading to the next bar which is the same meal deal but with a waterslide. This goes on all afternoon and we get back frozen but happy in the late afternoon as once the sun starts to go down it gets chilly in the water.
It was so not Laos as it was like being transported to a first year student party with everyone in bikinis. Bizarre but it is what Vang Vieng is known for.
When in Rome.
We arrive in town, get a bungalow by the river in the shadow of the weirdly shaped karst limestone mountains and go into town to investigate whether we go tubing. We find out that it is floating down the gentle river on a large inner tube and there are bars along the river where you can stop for a drink. All well and good. We sign up for a day of this including caving, not that we know what caving is yet.
We take a tuk-tuk about 20km out of town with a dozen others, the usual united nations of backpackers. We get into a stream at the base of one of the limestone mountains, sit in our inner tubes (one each) and use a rope to drag ourselves under the mountains through a series of tunnels and caves for an hour. Some of us are wearing head torches so we can see in the pitch black darkness. The water is not deep and in some places we are ducking to not hit our heads on the dripping stalactites. This is actually fun and not claustophrobic. We giggle our way through paddling like frogs in places where there is no rope. If this was anywhere else there would be hours of safety precautions but here we leap in and everyone makes it back outside again.
After lunch we hit the tubes on the river. We get in and our told to stop at the first bar but we are not told how to stop. This is where the fun starts.The first bar is only 20m down the river, the music is pulsating and people are paryting like its 1999. We stop by having water bottles thrown at us on the end of ropes. We catch the rope and are hauled in. The bar is a large precarious bamboo platform serving 1 dollar buckets of vodka. There are about 50 people (average age 20-25), all happily smashed, dancing and diving into the water. If you are 3 girls you get a bucket of vodka free.
We feel as if we have landed in a reality show akin to Temptation Island. What is ironic is that one of our party is a European director for "Beauty and the Geek". Lots of material here for a new show. We decide that it's sink or swim and so join in the dancing and shrieking at the people throwing themselves into the river off of "flying foxes" (pulleys on ropes) and unstable looking diving towers. After about an hour we are back in the river (feeling quite merry but surreal at this point) heading to the next bar which is the same meal deal but with a waterslide. This goes on all afternoon and we get back frozen but happy in the late afternoon as once the sun starts to go down it gets chilly in the water.It was so not Laos as it was like being transported to a first year student party with everyone in bikinis. Bizarre but it is what Vang Vieng is known for.
When in Rome.
1 comment:
Pretty soon you'll be making annual booze cruises houseboating in Vernon and tubing in the Okanagon.
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