Tubing in Vang Vieng

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We decided to take a minivan from Luang Prabang to Vang Vieng, (where we would meet our friends from Bangkok, Tasha and Joey) since it was only a few dollars more expensive than a bus and supposedly two hours shorter. The van company picked us up from our hotel and crowded us into an already-packed tuktuk to drop us at the van company lot. We were told the van would leave at 9 a.m., but in fact it would leave only when full. We had only seven of the potential ten passengers, so we waited for 45 minutes while the van company hoped for more passengers to make our ride more uncomfortable and give them more revenue. Finally, after a chorus of grumbling from those of us who thought we would leave an hour earlier, they gave up on additional passengers and the seven of us climbed into the van. Our bags were secured onto the top with rope and a tarp, and we were off, speeding towards Vang Vieng. We soon discovered exactly how the van took two hours less than a bus: the driver drove at nauseating, breakneck speeds, despite the endless hairpin turns. Soon nearly all of us were feeling less than stellar, and at one point one of the girls begged the driver to stop so we could all breathe and take a break. At every turn we were thrown against the window or the person next to us, making sleeping impossible. We stopped once at a muddy rest-stop, where a pack of dirty kids surrounded us in wide-eyed bafflement. Then we were off again, tearing down the mountain roads, fighting nausea and counting the minutes until the harrowing ride would end. The scenery was absolutely the most beautiful I've ever seen, with the possible exception of the Himalayas in Nepal, but the ride made it almost impossible to appreciate it. There were breathtaking views of green mountainsides and jagged rock formations, and tiny thatched villages were constructed on high stilts over the precipices. We grasped momentary images of the stunning views as we tore up and down the mountains, but there was certainly no opportunity to photograph or to really appreciate the beauty of northern Laos.

We finally made it to Vang Vieng in the early afternoon, and Jeff wandered into town to find us a hotel while I waited with our bags. He found us a hotel right on the river, with an assortment of budget rooms, thatched huts and one large nicely decorated room with bamboo furniture, a picture window with a view of the river and cliffs, and an open-air bathroom complete with potted plants. It was a few dollars more expensive than the huts but a lot more interesting and a lot more secure, with real cement walls and a locking window. We tossed our bags in the room and walked back into the center of town to get a late lunch and email Tasha and Joey so they would know where to meet us. Aside from a few guest houses and hotels, the part of town along the river was still overwhelmingly made up of local houses and vegetable vendors, with an assortment of stray chickens, cats and dogs scampering through the yards. In the center of town were a few tourist-friendly streets, with tourist restaurants and shops and a number of tube rental offices. It was definitely low season though, and the number of tourists was reasonably small. We emailed Tasha and Joey and then ate baguette sandwiches at a bakery/cafe on the main road. Tasha and Joey still hadn't arrived, so we returned to our hotel to relax and wait for them. They showed up at our door half an hour later and checked into one of the bungalows on the other side of the river, which could only be reached by the descent of a nerve-wracking set of stairs and the crossing of a patchy wooden bridge. It began to pour soon after they arrived, and the four of us huddled under a roof in the guest house's main shelter/restaurant to eat some dinner. We went to bed fairly early so we could be rested for a day of riding inner tubes down the river.

In the morning we woke to the lovely surprise of a dead baby rat on the floor of our room. Its origin was a bit of a mystery, but it probably fell from the ceiling. We gave it a nice resting place in the bushes outside our window, then put on swimsuits and got some breakfast in town. After eating we headed to the largest tube-rental company to rent tubes and get transportation upriver. We put our cameras and money into dry bags and then crowded into a tuktuk with a number of other people and a pile-up of large inner tubes. We were driven about 4 km down the river to a drop-off point, and told to return the tubes back by 5 p.m. The four of us waited for the rest of the tuktuk crew to take off down the river, then waded into the rocky river and climbed into our tubes. The cool river was a wonderful contrast to the hot beating sun, and the current was lazy but never too sluggish to keep us floating along. We spotted the first bar within a few minutes of drifting, and paddled and kicked madly to reach the shore before the current pulled us past. A few guys with bamboo poles were waiting to help us ashore and bring us beers. A beer purchase got us free unlimited jumps from the high bamboo platform into the river, and we all took our turns flying out over the water while hanging onto a swing like trapeze artists. Little local boys did flips off of the swing, although we limited ourselves to awkward flops into the river. We finished our beers and re-boarded our tubes and we were off again, floating towards a series of bars and rope swings. We stopped at about half of them, moving fairly quickly because we had no idea how long it would take us to get back to town. The bars pumped out loud pop music and buckets of booze, and the larger among them were packed with people drinking and watching each other swing over the water. Occasionally the river would drag us towards thickets or rocks, and we'd kick and paddle furiously to escape the obstacles. Before we knew it we were back at the outskirts of Vang Vieng, and an army of skinny little girls were in the water with us, pulling and dragging at our tubes to help us ashore. We tried to tell them we didn't need help but they insisted, clinging to us and dragging us onto the bank. We figured they wanted us to visit one last bar on shore, but instead, as soon as we were all on land, they held out their hands and asked for ridiculous amounts of money. We weren't even back to the right area of town, so we returned to our tubes and drifted on, refusing to pay five-year-olds for labor that they absolutely shouldn't be doing. Soon we were back to the river near our hotel, and we clambered out of our tubes and up a set of stairs. It was mid-afternoon, well before the 5 p.m. tube-return deadline. We walked through town to return our tubes to the rental office, then went to our hotel to dry off and escape the sun for a while. We determined to go tubing again the next day, but this time we'd take our time since we knew how long it took to get back. We spent a lazy evening in town and on the porch of Tasha and Joey's bungalow, lounging in hammocks and watching the sun set.

The next morning we got up a little earlier, ate breakfast, and returned to rent more tubes for the day. This time we took our time, and ended up spending almost three hours at a bustling bar with a particularly good swing. We all swung repeatedly, until our arms were aching from holding on to the wooden bar. We realized finally that it was getting fairly late and we were still only halfway back to Vang Vieng. We returned to our tubes, making one last bar stop for some final swings. They were serving steamed snake there, and we all tried a bite of the chewy, fairly flavorless meat. By the time we got back in our tubes for the last leg of the river we knew we'd miss the 5 p.m. deadline. The sun set as we drifted, turning the sky deep pinks and purples behind the rock cliffs lining the river. We skirted the little girls and climbed onto shore in town soon after dark had set in. We paid our late-tube fees, then returned to our hotel. We were all ready for some food and an early bedtime. We ate dinner at our hotel and then drifted off to bed to sleep off the day's festivities.

The next day was our last full day in Vang Vieng, and we decided we'd had enough tubing. We bought bus and train tickets to get us to the train station in Vientiane and back to Bangkok the next day, then spent the day wandering around town. We had decent pizza at one of the countless tourist restaurants, stopped briefly at a restaurant/bar offering rows of hammocks, and spent quite a bit of time doing nothing on Tasha and Joey's porch. For dinner we ate mediocre food at a restaurant playing American Pie way too loudly on multiple screens, then we went to bed early in preparation for a long day of traveling.

A very crowded bus took us to Vientiane the next morning, arriving mid-afternoon at a random stop in the middle of town. We had been told when we booked our tickets that the company would take us directly to the train station, but we had to walk to the bus company office and argue our case before they agreed to take us a few hours later. We grabbed some lunch at a cafe, then joined a few other people with their backpacks in the back of a saenthaw for the dusty ride to the border. The border-crossing was easy and quick, and soon we were back in Thailand. We took our seats in an air conditioned sleeper on the overnight train to Bangkok, and spent a moderately comfortable night on the train, arriving in Bangkok in the early morning.

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