Tubing Round 2

Tubing is everything your Mum says you shouldn't do which is why it is possibly the most fun in the world ever. This was my second trip to Vang Vein in the space of a year (Read about my first trip HERE) so knew exactly what I getting myself into. This time round I was there for 5 days and by the time we left I had pretty much had enough. For those not familiar with tubing it is simply a load of bars along the Nam Song river River which all have various “rides” such as rope swings, zip lines and slides and to get to them you float down the river in an inflated tractor inner tube. Each bar is also bumping the latest chart toppers. However the list is only about 6 songs long so you end up hearing the same songs about 20 times a day.

It is absolute carnage, rather brainless but a huge amount of fun. Despite the gap between my 2 visits to Laos being only about 6 months apart there had been a huge amount of development along the river with not one bar being the same as before and also one of the bars actually being in the process of being made out of bricks and mortar instead of the wooden shacks like the rest of them.

There was a group of about 10 of us from our guesthouse that would spend the majority of our days and nights together. It was a great bunch made up of people from all over Europe. There was Alice Jade and me from UK, 3 Swedes, 1 German, 1 Norwegian, 1 from Switzerland and another guy from the UK who was the spitting image of Andy Peters (see for yourself in the photos).

The general gist of a days tubing was get up about midday. Go get a tube (or not) find a taxi to take a load of you up stream to the starting point about 15 minutes out of the center of Vang Vein. Then over the space of 6 or so hours slowly make your way between the bars till darkness falls. After that either get in a taxi or float down the river back to the center of the village hand in your tube have a shower, eat (or not) then hit the various bars along the river in the village till the AM. Then repeat this as many times as you want. I would see some people with Tally's written on their bodies, some saying 90 days tubing! I hope they were lying as however much fun it is, its not worth devoting 3 months of your life to, there are far better ways to spend your time in Asia.

I thought rather than write a load about what I got up to when I tubing thought I would just let the pictures to do the talking. All it was just 5 days of partying really.

p.s. Another couple of videos for you at the bottom






>







































Looking back I have some great memories and spent my time there with a great bunch of people. It’s a shame it all came to an end but any longer and I doubt I would have lived to tell the tale.







15/01/10