Hanging and Banging in Vang Vieng!

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Hey Guys,

After surviving what was probably the most crazy mountain, limited visibilty, bus ride since South America we arrived in Vang Vieng also known as the hell hole or the Alcoholics Disneyland depending on what you like and who you ask. The place is pretty rural and although it is backdropped by huge beautiful Limestone mountains the rest of town is fairly shitty. We ended up getting a great bungalow at the "Otherside Bungalows" which is surprisingly enough on the otherside of the river! To get there you just cross a lovely little bamboo bridge, that also doubles as a road/highway for locals on scooters, God Bless the strength of Bamboo! We were pleasantly surprised that when we got checked into our bungalow Jon and Lucy were our neighbours. This was hilarious since they weren't supposed to be here for another few days.

They main draw for Vang Vieng is really outdoors activities like rock climbing, kayaking, biking and.....oh yeah tubing down the river and stopping at all the bars along the way and trying their huge slides and ropeswings!

Since we've already tried those other sports we opted for the tubing & bars. We ended up doing the tubing with some other people we met on the Slowboat, Meryl (Dutch girl), Francs (Dutch Guy) and Mark (German guy). We didn't get to the drop off point on the river till 3pm which was pretty late and we figured we would have to boot it to catch up with everone else. Boy were we wrong, we showed up at the first bar (at the drop off point) which had techno music blaring and about 200 people partying hard. There was also a competition going on at the rope swing. We grabbed a beer and quickly joined the festivities. The whole scene is surreal as you have this quiet little river and then a section with 22 bars all blaring music and people partying everywhere, flying off these huge swings and slides. There are local people sitting on the riverbanks taking pictures of tourists. We finally made our way into the river to check out some other bars, where we finally settled on the one with the huge slide complete with a big kicker at the end. Being the responsible intellectual man I am, I opted to try it out. Holy Shit!!!!!!! The whole slide is covered in tiles and you pick up some serious speed before you are launched into the river. I'll admit I was pretty sketched out when I was flying down it but it turned out good as I made a perfect entry. After another beer I decided to try it again this time I ended up going faster somehow and my landing wasn't that good so I had a pretty sore ass and back for the next 2 days. We tubed for another hour and then opted to get out and take a tuk tuk back to town as it was getting dark. That night the 5 of us headed out to the Q-Bar which was more drunken fun just condensed into a smaller bar with a lot of Bucket drinks (Whiskey/Red Bull/Coke). Needless to say the next day we figured out why there were so many restaurants in town that have huge loungers and show "Friends" and other popular tv shows all day.

Although we didn't get to take in too many activities in Vang Vieng, we had a good time hanging out with everyone and just relaxing.

So until the next one....

Cheers,

Matt & Tyne

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