I waved goodbye to Christine and jumped aboard my minivan to Vang Vieng on the notorious stretch of Rte. 13. my companions were really friendly and proceeded to become my room mates and tubing buddies. The journey was fine and we had an incredible red sunset slowly over the distant jagged mountains. We arrived in VV at nightfall and headed straight for ‘the strip’- a string of tacky bars filled with monged out gurning hippie wannabes off their faces watching reruns of friends in darkened rooms – all day and night. It was actually as bad as I expected and we settled for a couple of beer Laos in a chilled out reggae bar, resisting the lure of opium pizzas and mushroom shakes before being accosted by some particularly messed up Aussies in search of more ‘Happy Shakes’. The best part was the Russian guy who enthusiastically advised us there was in fact no need to even use the tube, you could quite happily walk between the bars eliminating the need to go into the water at all. Hmm certainly affirms the fact that most of the kids here could be in any dive in the world and still not have a clue what their name was!
Despite this sounds Russian advice we got up early and headed straight for the official government tubing office who deftly stamped out any entrepreneurial spirit of the locals hoping to cash in. we excitedly jumped into the tuk tuk as I calculated how many beers I could sink before getting on my rather twisty bus journey that afternoon – 2 and half hours, 3 beers per hour – that should do it!
I kicked things off by climbing a seriously rickety rope swing first and bombing into the river ass first as always. Each bar had some similar death trap attached to it as a means of catapulting drunken tourists off their land. I was not quite hammered enough to miss the simple knots that held the knicker elastic together on each swing – but heyho- the only way is down right! Then we commenced the floating and drinking…the sole point of the exercise, and boy was it fun, my companions were entertaining, especially when Suresh got smashed and decided to deliberately miss his bus! Anyway, the morning was fun, but I still had a stomach jarring bus journey ahead of me, so I bade farewell to the imposing karst mountains and tranquil river that would in a few hours be chocker with pissed, wired and puking foreigners.
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