Advertisement
Published: October 27th 2012
Edit Blog Post
I get back to Luang Prabang the next day courtesy of Mr Mung who gives up my front seat to two Lao women so I sit at the back feeling sick and then agree to join a lovely Irish brother and sister for dinner that night. Anne has gone travelling at the age of 36 and we agree how nice it is to really appreciate the world whilst being sure in who we are and having had the luxury of knowing how hard a working life can be and then giving it up! She is the spitting image of Renee Zellwegger in Bridget Jones: Edge of Reason. To retaliate when I tell her she says: “oh well we've worked out who you look like!- Kate Moss does Glastonbury."
Its the seocnd time i've been compared to Mossy in the 6 months i've been travelling.
I have a feeling the fact that we are both 37 and from Croydon is probably where the similarity starts and finishes but I LOVE it. Proof if proof were needed that i'm getting better with age and being a stone lighter and on permanent holday agrees with me. So much better than: “”The one
that played Ross' English girlfriend in Friends.
I head off the next day to Vang Vieng – Party central where The Essex are. Vang Vieng is famous for tubing. Sailing down the river sitting in huge rubber tubes. Unfortunateley the area has always lured lots of 18 year olds hell bent on drinking – and there have been deaths as a result. Once upon a time there were bars lined up all the way down the river and reaching out into the water so you could buy a beer and a joint and probably even some Opium from the comfort of your tube as you floated in the water. There were also precarious wooden slides and zip lining. A fatal combinatoin really. When we get there all the bars have been shut.
Still – I'm a little daunted – i'm not that strong a swimmer. . . and the Koreans are all decking themseles out in life jackets...
“Will you save me if I float off down the river?” I ask Polly.
“Oh yes” she says cheefully. “i'm a fully trained lifeguard...”
"well thank goodness for that!"
There's a group of about 40 of
us mostly Australians, some Americans and British.
“Right! - everybody got their Buddy!” says a cheerful Kiwi...
I plonk myself into the middle of the tube with a bag with a couple of beers on my lap and wonder why ive brought my flipflops...Then we push out into the river until the current picks us up and shimmies us along down river. The landscape is stunning in Vang Vieng – on either side we are flanked by huge rolling mountains - Karst formations – a type of rock formed with limestone that gives the mountains their strange rising pinnacle shapes and pale green colour. Now that all the bars have shut its incredibly peaceful sailing down the river – unlike some of the girls I keep my shirt and shorts on out of respect to Lao custom who request that Falangs do not swim in bikinis (its like being naked to them.) As we float down we get chatting to whoever passes and are joined by the two Kiwis who are now working in mining in Perth – and have come to Laos for a long (party) weekend. Nice.
We stop off at one little place and pull our tubes into the river banks. A couple of local men come down and offer us ice cold Beer Lao for 10,000 kip (about 80p) and joints (one Australian eagerly puts his hand up.) Then as more tubes float down the river we are told to get going so that they can bring in the next set of business.
There are rocks to either side of the river banks and the occasional spiny tree which you have to paddle to avoid but apart from that no serious hazards – its hard to see how anyone could die unless they were stoked on opium and ziplining into shallow water. But I suppose if someone had drunk enough and then fell asleep in their tube that would be enough to kill them – it only takes a couple of inches of water to drown.
The Australian who has hooked his feet under my tube and is hitching a ride and I start to veer perilously close to the rocks.
“Paddle!” he instructs. I've tried explaining that the whole steering thing will be a lot more effective if he just does the paddling but it doesn't work then just as I think we've escaped Ben floats over and pushes us in them. Bastard!
We lift ourselves up to avoid scraping our arses on the rocks and then then the Aussie points out the barbed wire floating in the water. Somehow we manage to paddle free:
“Hope your wound gets infected!” I shout cheerily to Ben - who a week after having is appendix out has jumped from waterfalls, tubed and played in a football match.
That evening we meet a bunch of British boys in the Irish bar for drinks. Sometimes amongst all the culture and the roughing it and the squatting toilets and the cheap beer and terrible tasting wine and exotic restaurants it is really nice just to convene as a nation and do what we do best. Sit and drink beer and watch football while the boys play pool or darts. Yes I know. Its amazing the things you miss about the homeland after a while. Ben gets absorbed into the pack – Mark is a thirty something primary school teacher on a 6 month sabbatical with receding hair line. Ben (mark II) is skinny with dark spiky hair and bright eyes – he's obviously the sensitive one and so has the rest of the pack relentlessly taking the piss out of them -the group scape goat. He apparently welled up in the middle of reading "One Day" and ended up “putting in 4 hours of groundwork" to have sex with a girl that only lasted ten minutes before she vomited half way through. Another reason why i've gone off casual sex – listening to how a pack of boys talk about the women they pull behind their backs...The rest of the group is made of Andy - a slightly better looking version of Martin Clunes (talk about damning with faint praise) and Baden and anther one who essentially look the same. They are muscled, tattooed with intricately shaped facial hair. As the most conventionally attractive of the groups they love themselves – they are also about as bright as an energy saving light bulb and as interesting to listen to as a washing machine.
“So can I ask you a personal question – are you really 38??”” asks Mark who has a bit of a soft spot for me....
“No. I'm 37” I say.
“oh well almost...” he says “ so I guess 'life is about to begin for you...'”
Men...
“Not really – I already love my life so it will just be an extention...” I say – perhaps a little on the defensive side!!
We go to one of the many waterfront bars where everyone is drinking buckets of cocktails. All of the Ozzies and Americans from the tubing are there. They seem to have formed a new tradition of shouting along to the lyrics of Celine Dion's "My heart will go on" at the end of the evening so we join in. Ben turns to me and says twice: "everyone else hates us here you know..."
As we walk home The Chuckle brothers try and persuade us to do a drinking game. I am happy to put in the 2000 kip (about 1 pound fifty) but refrain from participating. One of them stands infront of me and explains the rules loudly again. As if this will peer pressure me into joining. I decline again. They haven't worked out that by the time you hit your late thirties peer pressure doesn't exist. And if it as one very bright 21 year old pointed out to me – it wouldn't have much effect on me as i'm almost 20 years too old to be anyone's peer. Lovely – thanks.
The game is this. Everyone stands around in a circle and passes around a can of beer. Each person has to shake the beer can three times and then bang it against their head three times...until it explodes against the side of one unlucky person's head. They are the loser (or winner.) That is it.
Strangely I don't think at any age I would have wanted to bang a can of beer against my head. But I have to say it is one of the most pointless and funniest things I have EVER watched.
Advertisement
Tot: 0.174s; Tpl: 0.012s; cc: 10; qc: 52; dbt: 0.1313s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.1mb