Tubing - Vang Vieng

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Tubing

Greg - Zip line

Arriving at second bar

Me - Big Rope Swing

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AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH..............This place is awesome!

Here's the gist of what happens in Vang Vieng: for a couple of dollars you rent a large rubber inner tube (from a tractor) and you catch a ride 10km up the Nam Song River. You then spend the day sitting in the inner tube floating back down the river where for the first 5km there is nothing to do but sit back and enjoy the spectacular scenery around you, find your inner peace and become at one with yourself. However, after 5km, your karma has been equalised, you are finally at one with yourself and............. you arrive at the first bar, where the situation changes.........the river is then lined with bars all hosting their own variety of rope swings, zip lines and vollyball courts. As you float past these bars you are haulled in by bar staff using bamboo poles where you catch up with all the other 'tubers' and enjoy all there is to offer. This place, like Koh Pha Ngan in Thailand, is basically just a playground for adults! The bars cover about a 3km stretch of river and by the time everybody has passed them they are mightily drunk and have another 2km of river left to conquer before returning to Vang Vieng town centre. Again, like the rest of SE Asia the health and safety on this little exercise is at its bare minimum, there is no way such a thing would be allowed in Europe, particularly if you saw the construction of some of the platforms from which the zip lines are attached................. but that's all part of the fun.....I guess?!?

After a day of tubing the partying continues into the night around town where we'd meet up with various people from during the day. Greg and I did two days of tubing whilst in Vang Vieng and that then required another two days for recovery and this place has that covered also. All the bars in the town of Vang Vieng are set up with small bed-like seating facing large screens showing either; Friends, The Simpsons, Family Guy or pretty much any film of your choice. Just the sort of mindless activity perfect for recovery. If you are lucky enough to find the right bar you also get to sample the aptly named 'Happy Menu', from which you can chose from the following:

* Happy Tea (weed)
* Happy Shake (weed)
* Happy Pizza (weed)
* One Joint (weed)
* One Bag (weed)

* Mushroom Tea
* Mushroom Shake
* Mushroom Pizza
* 10 Mushrooms

* Opium Tea
* Opium Coffee
* Opium Joint
* One Bag



OK so in this place, I admit, there's a bare minium......well, there's very little........OK, there's NO culture what so ever, and it's not exactly 'travelling Laos', but........... it's F&$king fun. Gotta love it!

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Photos

Our Digs
Greg and I shared this romantic 'hut' together for the duration of our stay in Vang Vieng. It comes fully furnished with a matress on the floor and a small table.

Let the Tubing Begin
Greg and I 10km up the river ready for our first day of tubing.

Tubing - Day 1!!
Nice stance!

Tubing - Day 1!!
The view down the river

Warning
Basically it says 'spend money at our bar, get drunk............but it's not our fault when you get hurt'................oh, that's reassuring

Zip line
From an engineers point of view.........this is a questionable arrangement....

Weeeeeee
......but sod, we're going to use it regardless.

Second Bar
This was the most popular bar, with the highest swing and where most people seemed to hang out

Greg
.....posing, again.

night fall
A bit too much time spent at the bars meant we had to make it back in the dark

yet another pose
Stretching it out after a hard day

Back in Town
....the fun continues

uh oh
The buckets are out...........and we all know what that means

Decisions Decisions
hmmm, what will it be then?......opium joint, or maybe just mushroom tea!?!

Fancy Dress
The extent of our fancy dress for haloween involved gaffer taping up Gregs face.