Laos Tubing

an old one but classic, one of my favorite pieces from the man, the myth, the legend!


The pace of which we were traveling through Laos was unhealthy, stupid and goes against all human logic...but it was all for THE CAUSE! Our situation was a tough one; we were in Chaing Mai and had to go to Laos in order to get another 2 week visa so we could continue south to the islands. Thai immigration recently changed the rules regarding tourist Visas; when you fly into Thailand you get a 30 day tourist visa automatically, but when you are coming overland like we were you only get a 2 week visa. This causes a lot of problems with backpackers like us. The solution is doing what they call border bounces in which you go to the nearest neighboring country, get your passport stamped again and return to Thailand.

Anyways we had a deadline to make it to the island of Koh Phangang for the notorious Full Moon Party that was a MUST in our books. The dilemma was do we just do the border bounce or do we suck it up and speed through Loas with the 3 spare days we had. We decided to go for it, although it would be a lot of travel time we had to see Laung Prabong and make it to Vang Vieng for THE CAUSE!

What is this cause you ask? Well its called tubing and whenever we would ask people about Laos, 9 times out of 10 the first thing they would say is, “You HAVE to do the tubing!”. Tubing for young backpackers in SE Asia is what Disney World is to little kids, Home Town Buffet (the greasiest buffet ever for those not from SD) is to anti-anorexics and what a thorn-hat shop is to Jesus!

Tubing is set up like this; you rent an intertube in town, then you catch a Tuk Tuk to the river. Then you spend the entire day floating on your intertube from riverside-bar to riverside-bar. The employees throw ropes to you and pull you into their bars if you signal to them. There are probably 15 bars in total. You are then greeted with a free shot of the local whiskey no matter what bar you go to, sounds cool right? Well it gets much better. Each of these bars has giant trapeze style swings and/or long zip lines! One bar even has a massive water slide the slants up severely at the end and shoots you out and up like a human canonball!



These videos arent of us, but just wanted to post them to give you all a feel of what its like...


From the border of Thailand we took a 2-day slow boat trip to Luang Prabang. On that boat we befriended about 6 Irish guys who were escaping the wretched job market in Ireland and were enroute to try their luck in Australia. We also became friends with another Irish couple, an Australian couple and one of the most insane/coolest guys Ive ever met named Simon, from London.

We all hung out together in Luang Prabang and migrated to Vang Vieng together. We pretty much rented out an entire bungalow between all of us and it was on from there! Since we only had one day to do the tubing we had to make it count. I set my alarm at 9am and proceeded to wake everyone up with some house music via my Ipod speaker. The pre-party kicked off at 10am at our bungalow and by noon we were on our way to the river!

A glimpse of the river from the first bar!

Hoped out of the Tuk Tuk and grabbed the intertube Jen, Simon and I were sharing for the day and sprinted to the first bar like a little kid on Christmas morning to catch a glimpse of this river that caused so much hype on the SE Asia backpacker circuit! As my eyes focused on the swings, perfect sunny weather, bars, ziplines, girls in bikinis and stunning mountanous backdrop; my jaw dropped to the floor while my liver put on its boots for battle as I fought to sputter an “Oh oh ohhhhhhh my GOD!!!”. The excitement was overwhelming; people dancing to house music, drinking out of the type of buckets I used to use in the sandbox back in elementary school and people swinging from an absolutley massive trapeze swing! I bolted to the bar for my first bucket. As I mingled around with everyone discussing how amazing this place was, one of the Irishmen came up to the group with a market he scored off one of the employees from the bar. Aussie flags were drawn on the Australian couples' backs, California was printed across my chest and someone decided to write “Dumpster Baby” on my arms...weird! After everyone had their countries names somewhere on their bodies, some stupid slogan(i.e. The English do it better, I rode a Kangaroo here, Irish really do drink a lot...watch!), or an obscene word or two...we were officially ready to face the river!

The first bar is the jumpoff for the rest of the day. People spend an hour or two here drinking, meeting eachother and watching fellow tubers fall hard off the swing. The swing here is the biggest on the river by far and I must admit I was quite intimidated! Garrett being the crazyman he is, climbs up the ladder and goes for it first. WHOOSH...he takes it like Tarzan and lets go at the highest point rather than waiting until he swung back to a lower point...and oh boy did he pay for it! The arms began to flail and I knew it was going to be ugly then. He landed flat on his back from a good 3-4 meters high, followed by a loud “Ohhhhh!” from the crowd. The employees with scorecards gave him 8 and 9's....well worth it! He comes out of the water and his back literally looks like one big bruise and he is hurting!




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I gain enough courage to give it a go, despite watching Garrett just wreck himself a few minutes earlier. Once up on the platform I caught some pretty bad jitters and almost bailed out. But soon it was my turn and I just went for it. I held on until I was at the lowest point then released my grip and made a graceful dismount into the water....whewwww! So stoked I did the biggest swing first because it made every swing after it seem like nothing. The river became my playground thereafter! The remainder of the day was spent partying, swinging, zip lining, meeting people, going down the massive waterslide, playing volleyball and of course floating down the river.



Our legendary crew!!!

Night fell and we were forced to head back into town as much as we didnt want to! After a quick dinner we paraded to the island of bars in town and danced the night away. We unwound back at the bungalows after the bars and talked about the crazy day we had just had. One of the Irishmen, who is one of those guys who can remember every line from movies, decided to put on a show for us. He renacted a good 10 minutes of quotes from Pulp Fiction, but in an over-the-top Irish accent. He had us rolling on the floor, crying and holding our stomachs! An absolutely pricelss moment, something I will never forget!

The Irish version of Pulp Fiction was the iceing on the cake, all the trecherous traveling we had gone through to experience the river for just one day was more than well worth it! The next morning, sore as could be, we hoped on a bus for a 20-hour trek enroute to The Full Moon Party....GOOD LORD!!!