This is one word that can be used to describe the town of Vang Vieng. It is an odd little place between Lurang Prabang and the Laos capital and it is mad.
It is mad because it is in the middle of nowhere but somehow has become a place where all gap year people, university students and backpackers go for some hedonistic activity called tubing.
Sitting in an inflatable tube and floating down a dirty looking river might not seem like the most exciting of activities, but when you combine it with bar hopping things change very quickly.
Add into the equasion drinks being sold in buckets with whiskey and a type of red bull that has been made illegal in most western nations and tubing suddenly turns into an extreme sport. I say extreme because each bar you float into has the most incredible rope swings, pulley systems and other human firing contraptions to make it quite dangerous and also very fun.
We left Vang Vieng feeling slightly sore and caught a bus to Vientiane which is where I am now writing this. One thing that takes some getting used to in Laos is that they have a curfew. We have to be in our guesthouse by 11.30pm and the streets pretty much are dead by about 10.30pm. Not sure what happens if we stay out later but not in the mood to find out!
Jen and I are leaving in the next day or so to travel further south down Laos and will be arriving on the border of Cambodia soon.
Jen getting in the way of my picture across Lurang Prabang.
River kids showing off for the camera.
bx
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