A tubious trip to Laos

Every year thousands of Brits travel to the small riverside town of Vang Vieng in Laos. Situated, well, in the middle of nowhere, where the cows are the size of dogs and the roads much worse than a rally track, it is an unlikely destination for most tourists. 

Why then, you might be thinking, do so many of us flock to such an unassuming, unlikely destination? There is one main reason: tubing. In case you don't know, tubing is floating down a river in a hired rubber ring, stopping at bars along the way, and doing jumps/slides if you feel the need to.

As is the case with many holiday destinations popular with Brits, the town had been transformed to suit our needs. Restaurants, all of which played Friends on repeat, offered very little Laos cuisine and instead advertised burgers and chips, chicken sandwiches and the like. Many of the restaurants simply used pictures from Macdonalds, removing the 'M' from any packaging beforehand. It was cheap and a bit tacky, but exactly what we expected. On our first evening, we ate in one of these identical restaurants before meeting some girls we'd met on the coach for drinks. Pete, who had been sharing what was essentially one and a half seats with one of them for twelve hours, neither able to sleep as they were squashed together by luggage, had already spilled the beans on me and Charlotte, so it felt like we knew them fairly well already. 

Tubing has gathered a reputation for being rather dangerous over the last few years, and we were slightly tubious about the next day when we awoke. Nevertheless we were excited, and by mid afternoon we were sipping away on the first of many whiskey buckets in the first bar of the riverside strip. We made our way to the second and third bars, boarding a 'whiskey train' on the way (choobe choobe!) and becoming covered in writing. Pete, apparently, loved Mexico, while the girls supposedly loved vagina. In the third bar it poured with rain, and a mass football game broke out on an improvised sandy football pitch. I'd found a broom somewhere and was trying out a football/quidditch hybrid game. It didn't work and Pete's coach buddy broke the broom when she attempted to fly. 

The bars along the river aren't evenly spaced apart, as I thought they would be. There are bars all along, but they seem to open interchangeably and when we were there there was a big gap between the first four bars and the rest. We left the first bunch of bars quite a while after the sun had disappeared behind the mountains which aligned the river; we'd massively underestimated how long it would take to tube back to town. Floating along in the pitch black, we decided eventually that we were completely lost and clambered out the river at a random accessible bank. After a brief argument with a tuk-tuk driver (and chants of 'drive, drive, drive') we made our way back to town to get ready for the night ahead. 

The nightlife of Vang Vieng has seemingly been monopolised by one bar. It has a similarly imaginative name to 'The Club' in Bangkok and is called 'Bucket Bar' where, unsurprisingly, you can buy buckets. It has an outside dancing area surrounded by open-sided shacks where people sit on cushions. A bucket of whiskey, lemonade and red bull (which, rumour has it, contains speed over here) costs 30,000 kip (£2.50) which is pretty damn good. We drank the night away before some much needed sleep.

Damaged but not broken from the night before, in the morning we needed some food. Despite having been in SE Asia for a couple of weeks, the thought of curry for breakfast still didn't appeal to us. We had some chicken sandwiches (for about the fifth time since we arrived) and regained some energy before returning to the river. We were less tubious this time, weathered by our experience the day before. Today we had a different plan: spend a bit less time at the first few bars then do the marathon all the way back down the river before dark. We got a few buckets in us, and I bumped into a friend from home (which rather took me by surprise) then did the long journey. 

Perhaps now is a good time to point out that Vang Vieng isn't just renowned because of tubing. True, tubing is its main attraction, but the steep mountains which surround the town really are quite impressive and the view from the tube on the way down the river was unlike anything I'd seen before. The view from our hostel room (Popular View Guesthouse) was nearly equally as stunning. At £3 a night we did have to put up with two pet lizards in our room, sandy sheets and a pooey bathroom (not helped by me and my nigh on uncontrollable bowels - though Pete wasn't much better), but the view was worth it.

We ate in a restaurant right next to our hostel. Charlotte and I had an Indian style curry (our red curry request had been lost in translation), having politely refused the obviously high waiter's offer of a 'special menu' (meals laced with narcotics). Pete had chicken with rice twice, finishing a friend's unwanted meal. Our nighttime drinking spot was once again Bucket Bar, where it poured with rain all night. We spent the whole time sitting with our buckets instead of on the exposed dancefloor, though we couldn't help but get wet on unavoidable dashes to the bar or to the toilet. 

Normally not much else happens in a night after the bars and clubs are done with. The same can't really be said when Pete is around - in Bangkok Charlotte and I found him dancing in the rain with a bunch of people we'd never met (see first blog). Here, his blossoming romance with his seat buddy from the coach took a turn for the worse when she became frustrated with his deep sleep and decided that a Thai massage style, 4am alarm clock was necessary. I awoke abruptly when the light was turned on, to shouts of 'Pete! Wake up!' and the constant noise of slapping. Unperturbed, Pete continued his sleep. When she left the room I locked the door only to be awoken five minutes later by incessant banging (on the front door, not from Pete's bed, unfortunately for him). Charlotte let her in and at last we all slept peacefully. Finally we could get some kip.

We'd been fairly used to being busy on our travels, but the next day was not one of those days. Two days of tubing had taken their toll, and we did very little but sort out our plans for the next few days and have something to eat. We'd survived the tubing experience *queue big sigh of relief from mum*. Next we'd be getting a bus to Udon Thani in Thailand, before flying to Phuket to begin our tour of Thailand's southern islands.