Vang Vieng Tubing

---

Well James and I woke up this morning and no Matt. I headed out at around 8:30 to get my laundry done and go searching for him. I found him about an hour later or he found me he says. He had gotten lost and ended up going to a random hostel to sleep. Unfortunately his pockets were empty in the morning and he lost some valuables. Other than that we continued the day normally.

The reason this town has such a party atmosphere is its famous tubing. People generally start finishing there tubing around 6 and end up heading back into town totally trashed to continue the party. This is what we planned for today. We walked over to the tube shop at around 11 in the morning after some breakfast and internet. We rented tubes and jumped into a tuk-tuk to get a ride to the start of the river. It turns out the river is only about 3km long so we wondered why it was taking people 6-8 hours to get down it.

We found out when we arrived. The river is completely built up on both sides with patio bars. They offer free shots thoe whole way down and if you want to play beer pong they will provide the beer. The other drinks are also really cheap. We stopped at the first bar at the top of the river for a few drinks and then began our journey. This lasted all of about 10 seconds to the next bar across the river where the drinking process started again. This time it was mixed in with some huge rope swings and high diving platforms. All of the patio bars have huge platforms, rope swings and water slides to use so you have to be careful using them and tubing by. We managed to make it to the third bar another 10 meters down the river before we got seperated. We played some beer pong and socialised then headed down stream. I wanted to tube for a bit before stopping again but Matt and James seemed to want to stop at every bar. They stopped at the 4th bar and i continued on a ways before stopping at a place with free food to wait for them.

This is where things got out of hand. I could see them way up the river so me and some brits who were also waiting for friends from up the river went up on a platform to eat drink and wait. Ill leave out the specifics but there eded up being too much alcohol some arguments and a bit of a scuffle. It took me two tries to swim back up river and I caught the guys just before they managed to get into a tuk-tuk home.

All in all we spent about 5 hours on the river and only tubed down about 50 meters :D. We got back to town and put our drunkard to bed before going out and getting some lao dinner. We might have to make a second attempt tomorrow. After that the partying is enough for me for a while and we will continue south.

---