Tubin' Laos, Dude

Throughout our travels, we've been told about the wonders of Laos - cheap, beautiful, fun, outdoorsy & how SE Asia used to be. It seems to be the #1 destination on the established backpacker trail through Asia, which is fed intravenously by Lonely Planet books (see future blog entry).

No matter what else anyone said about Laos, without a miss, they all mentioned tubing in Vang Vieng. We had even seen backpackers proudly sporting their "tubing Laos" t-shirts in S. Thailand. Who are we to buck backpacker tradition in Laos and not go tubing?

Here's the drill - you go to the tube shop, give them $10, with $6 of the $10 a deposit, returnable if the tube is back by 6 PM. The giant tractor inner tubes are then loaded onto a tuk tuk and off you go to the river.

Let Spring Break Laos-style begin. Bob Marley is pulsating up the river valley and the first bar can be visited before even dipping a toe in the water. Nothing like a little beer or cocktail to get you situated for your day of tubing, sans life jacket. This is Asia after all.

Signs at the put-in say "Dont tip the children as it encourages them to skip school." We weren't exactly sure what this meant, but we would soon find out.

We set off with an Irish trio, a Finn & a Swede in the fast-flowing brown river in a light rain. Not 200 yards into the tubing experience, while our butts were still relatively dry, we spotted the second bar. Small children stand on bamboo pilings at the shore and throw water bottles on strings or pass long bamboo rods to passing 'tubers' to reel them in like giant fish. This can be both difficult and comical as the river is flowing quickly with lots of swirling water close to shore.

Each bar along the way is essentially the same rickety bamboo structure on the side of the river cranking Bob Marley, selling Beer Lao & giving away free Lao Lao shots, Laos rice whiskey, something akin to moonshine. Some of the bars even have second story towers with trapezes to swing out into the water.

It is utterly surreal. The Farang (Asian name for foreigners) are eating this up. Drunken Farangs are falling out of their tubes while being pulled to shore by 75 lbs. grade school children. After successfully landing on solid ground and having a drink or three, Farangs are then swinging from trapezes, narrowly missing the originating bamboo towers when they hang on too long.

Prior to tubing, we had noticed quite a few limping, bandaged backpackers around town and now we figured out why.

We decided to pull over at the third bar. Stephen and I got off the river with relative grace, although the two third-graders pulling me to shore almost gave themselves a hernia.

Not so for our Irish friends. The first Irish lassie pulled a child into the drink who was attempting to reel her in and a second child aborted his rescue mission after he too was pulled into the river. We were to see her eventually way down river. The second Irish lassie lost her tube while being pulled to shore, but her husband was able to dive in and save the tube.(see photo) Complete and utter hilarity.

After drinking the requisite Beer Lao and doing one swing from the trapeze, we set off down river with no other stops at the eight plus bars offering refreshments to the parched tubers. About 7:30 that night, we saw a barefoot girl in a string bikini stumbling around town in the dark with her tube. We don't think she got her $6 deposit back.

After speaking with many experienced tubers in our travels in Laos, we heard horror stories of near drownings, people stuck in reeds in the river until midnight and about many a trip to the hospital in Vang Vieng.

AS THE TUK TUK SPUTTERS...
We are back in Luang Prabang, having just spent some time in a remote area of N. Laos. We trekked to a hill tribe only accessible by foot through mud, rice fields, mountains and jungle. We overnighted in the village with a family and had the unique opportunity to learn more about the culture of the various tribes. We leave for Vietname on Saturday and are still having a fantastic journey.