When looking through the photos of Vang Vieng, I noticed a phenomena that we had yet to encounter on our trip – there was not a single photo of the place taken by me, all of the photos were taken by Steph. This can be explained by two reasons:
- Steph is the only one with a waterproof casing, as such she was the only one of us to take a camera on the river
- The lack of shots from me point to a lack of good photo subjects that I encountered on dry land
This sums up our two days in Vang Vieng, which was dominated by the experience of bar hopping via tube down the Nam Song (Song River).
Vang Vieng is a six to seven hour, pretty brutal bus ride from Luang Prabang, and another four to five hour bus ride to Vientiane, so it’s about half way on our trip through Laos to the capital.
As soon as you enter the place, one of the first things you see are hordes of backpackers walking around, drinking from miniature buckets using straws and sporting variations of the same slogan on T-shirts, singlets and other clothing: “In the Tubing – Vang Vieng, Laos”.
As you can see from the above map, Vang Vieng isn’t the largest of places, really just dominated by a few blocks of hotels, cafes and bars. The light grey strip towards the bottom of the map is the Nam Song and the main reason why this village is inundated with backpackers.
The second thing that you notice is the strangeness that every bar around town is showing continual re-runs of Friends (a couple of rebels were showing Family Guy). Despite being warned about it in the guide book, we were still blown away to see that this was actually the case.
We flew into town at around 5:30pm and ended up staying at a place a little outside the main drag called the “Nana Guesthouse”. Cost was about 40,000 Kip a night (USD4.70) which was outstanding value!
It was about a 5 minute walk into town and we ended up grabbing some dinner at one of the many places catering to the backpacker crowd. I had a tasty dish called “laab” (very similar to the Thai dish of “Larb”) whereas Steph slipped into comfort mode – ordering pizza and then relaxing back on the cushions to get re-acquainted with her friends on “Friends”.
Getting into a meal of laab – chilli-lime infused pork mince and veg, served with sticky rice
The next day we headed back into town, had some breakfast and caught up on some news – apparently the Red Sox had the come back of the century to win game 5 of the ALCS against the Rays (prior to this game the series was 3-1 Rays, so every game was do or die for the Red Sox) – sensational news! We then picked up a tube from one of the many tube hire shops, jumped on a tuk-tuk to head upstream to a prime tube launching point!
The tube shops
Funnily enough, the tube launching point also coincides with the first bar on the river, where we stopped for a beer before getting into the water.
Launching our tubes…some whack had hired a kayak by mistake
We may have been in the tubes for less than a minute before we were getting called over by men with bamboo poles to another pub – would have been less than 50m or so downstream. As this pub had a flying fox, we grabbed on and let ourselves be pulled into the pub.
My first flying fox ride for the day – I ended up getting booed for releasing before the forced stop. Apparently real men hit it at full speed so that you do a double back somersault while getting a good case of whiplash.
Better take a shot of whiskey before I attempt that one!
Second attempt – WooHooooo…OOF….splash!
Here we met quite a few of the people that would become tubing buddies for the day!
With all the focus on the bar-hopping, it was easy to miss the sheer natural beauty of the place. The river was surrounded by cliffs and jungle and you could imagine calmly drifting down the river in this natural paradise.
The next bar…
…and the next one. This bar has both a swing & a slide. A must do!
Steph’s first go on the swing.
Let me show you how this is done!
My swing experience was a touch more dramatic than Steph’s, complete with a near collision with someone coming off the water slide at the same time.
I think the guy with the beer in this photo is the lightweight…Lao Lao shooters are the bomb!
A “Happy Shake” - - Is watersport + copious amounts of alcohol + magic mushroom infused milkshake really a good idea??
Ooooo…so tempting!
Mr Lao Lao…a Nam Song icon, renowned for his Happy Shakes
Why use a wallet when you can wear your money?
Making some new friends “In the Tubing”…
Stew & Catherine
and “Happy Shake” Boy
Enjoying some quiet time together on the river
Yep – the drunk backpackers are the tourist attraction for Laotians visiting Vang Vieng!
What they were taking a photo of!
“We’re going to have to start skipping pubs if we’re going to get back before dark…”
Three examples of swinging…
#1 How NOT to swing…try grabbing the rope before jumping off the platform!
#2 How to swing
#3 Dismount with style!
No time for any more bar hopping. Must take roadies!
One of the biggest challenges of tubing (and lets face it, there aren’t that many) is getting the tubes back before the 6pm cut-off time – otherwise you forfeit a deposit of almost twice the daily hiring fee. Note to backpackers – if intending to go tubing for 3 days or more (and we met quite a few of them on the river), don’t take your tube back and forfeit your deposit – it’s actually cheaper.
Coming out of the last pub, we realised that it was going to be tight getting back to town before cutoff. The only option was to start paddling to speed up our arrival….
Paddle faster!
Unfortunately, paddling skills were variable amongst the group – usually correlated with the amount of alcohol imbibed. In a true “all or nothing” approach, we formed a chain and coordinated our paddling finer than any Oxford 8 has seen in many years.
At the disembarkation point, helpful locals help grab tubers to bring them into shore, normally near the entrance of another pub. We gladly accepted their help, however deftly dodged the pubs and started jogging into town with the tubes on our shoulders to try and get in before cutoff.
The bad news is that we missed cutoff by about 10 minutes. The good news is that the locals, in typical Laos manner, gave about 30 – 45 minutes leeway, as such we got our deposits back, which was good as the rest of our cash needed drying out.
Damn paper money!
We returned to our rooms, showered, changed and hung our clothes and cash out to dry. We then promptly headed back into town to grab some dinner and continue on with the festivities.
After dinner, Happy Shake Boy indicated he needed some help to get back to his room by passing out cold at the bar. Luckily, Catherine was kind enough to help him back to the guesthouse and do hourly observations…gotta love those GPs who decide backpacking is a great way to travel!
The rest of us could have probably used the rest, however we headed over to the biggest party in town as evidenced by the fact they serve the biggest drinks – the BUCKET BAR!!
You can take this as a pre-re-enacted before and after shot
Amazing who you meet – Nemo (the Korean Dutch girl) who we met on our trip to the Khangsi falls in Luang Prabang!
The Bucket Bar was ace…don’t know what time Steph and I stumbled home together, but the last thing I remember is passing Stew, who we had assumed had headed home to bed, passing us going back to the party, mumbling something about Lao Lao and bendy straws.
Unfortunately, following every great day out on the piss, there comes a hangover…and oh my God, what a hangover we had. We crawled out of bed at around 9:30am, walked up the road to the nearest restaurant with cushions and suffered through some breakfast while we watched seasons 4-5 of Friends.
I can now understand why the bars show re-runs of Friends day in day out – the episodes are strangely hypnotic and comforting…you feel like you’re holed up with old mates, and it’s just comforting to be around them. I have to tell you, these Laotians think of everything!
Steph went back to bed around noon, whereas I holed up in an internet cafe to do some email. Found out that the Red Sox had won game 6 to force a game 7 and I got my second wind thinking that it could be 2004 all over again (they ended up losing game 7…booooo!).
Steph re-surfaced around 4pm…resoundingly claiming victory over Stew who didn’t resurface at all until 7pm! Happy Shake boy was apparently all good, so we ended the day as we began with dinner, friends and Friends.
The next day, Stew and Cath left on the morning bus, however promised to look into hotels on our behalf in Vientiane (we were on the afternoon bus heading to the capital). So, with the comfort of knowing our next town’s accommodation was taken care of, Steph and I used the opportunity to do some looking around town.
The two sturdiest looking bridges of the many that cross the Nam Song, connecting the islands with the main town.
If you’re too drunk to see this sign, you will end up somewhere in Thailand...on a tube.
The tubing aside, Vang Vieng is surrounded by some pretty amazing country side and if we ever get back there, it will definitely be a priority to get out of town for some good walks and nature loving…and possibly some more tubing, depending on where we’re at in terms of responsibilities and our sense of self-preservation.
We bought a few of the compulsory “In the Tubing” singlets and then grabbed the bus for our next and final stop within Laos: Vientiane.
