Tubing

On our last day in Vang Vieng we checked out early and headed into town and a rented a tube to float down the river in. Tubing as it’s known is the ‘done thing’ in Vang Vieng. The tubing company dropped us back near the farm and we hoped in the river with our large black tubes and floated back to town. The river didn’t have much flow in most places and we needed to get back pretty quickly to catch a bus to Vientiane.

The general idea with tubing is that you make a day of it. There’s bars at certain parts of the shore where you can stop and have a beer. Many of these also have swings and flying foxes that you can fling yourself off into the water. Basically the you hold onto a padded piece of wood above your head which is attached to a cable. You launch yourself off a platform into the middle of the river, letting go and dropping into the water. These are great fun and you can drop from very high up on some of them. On one occasion I didn’t drop when I should have and went flying back towards the platform. The local in charge tried to grab me but couldn’t get a grip so I ended up swinging out again but didn’t have enough momentum left to make it to the place I was supposed to drop from. I’d have to drop in an area with more shallow water instead. You’d think I’d be crapping myself thinking I’d break my neck or something but it was actually all very calm. Every time I’d hover over the safest part to drop the local guy would yell ‘jump, jump!’ and after a couple of times I let go. I landed safely. Just a couple of metres away the water got really shallow and there were rocks so it was good timing!

Back in Vientiane later that afternoon we checked into a guesthouse and had dinner with a couple we’d met on the bus ride before calling it a night. The next morning we were flying to China at 6:30am so it was a 4am wake up. Ouch!