Day 391 – Tubtastic!

Vang Viang with its beautiful caves and nearby ethnic minority villages has been hyped up to us as one of the best places on this trip. This is largely down to its popular outdoor activity of tubeing down the Nam Xong . We were warned by our tour guide about a death three weeks ago and the dangers of consuming alcohol along the way as the many bars along the river try and pull you in to drink alcohol. We all had our wits about us and decided to take it handy and stick together. We got our tubes and got a tuc tuc to our start point. A hippy guy with pink glasses explained our route to us.

Before setting off, Conor, Priya and Renee went on a zip line high over the river before plummeting down into the river!!! The current seemed pretty strong as it had rained the previous night. We all got in our tubes and floated for about three minutes to the first bar. They basically wave at you and throw you a rope with a bottle attached to the end of it to make it easier to catch and throw. We all had a drink and took in the majestic views…Tom Burke would have been in his element!!!

So many people were scattered around the place and the bars were pretty full. We floated down the river a little more before another stop-off in a bar. This bar had mud volleyball so Mike and I decided to give the locals a run for their money. Two Laos girls played with us. It wasn’t a serious game; I just played in the mud!! A few of the group went down a slide which looked pretty awesome…and once again the landings weren’t great, they all have the bruises to prove this! No more bars were stopped at after this…we just floated down the river and enjoyed the jaw dropping views of the mountains in the background.

It was great to see everyone smile. The rapids and tiny islands kept things interesting. I bumped into a German girl along the river and had a brief chat to her, it was like speed dating for a minute…in a tube!! This really was the life and something we will always remember. All in all it took us over 4 hours to complete the journey with the stops along the way. I imagine most people get stupidly drunk along this river and ignore the beauty of the surroundings but we will appreciate the views forever more and the images of the sun glistening on the river over the mountains will remain in our heads. After this we had lunch and talked about the day.

Everyone was pretty exhausted from our escapades and we hit the hay after a thoroughly enjoyable day tubeing. All in all we loved Vang Viang but we feel that it will be ruined by drunken tourists and that the overall beauty of the place will not be appreciated.

Over and out,

Gary