The previous stop in my South East Asia trip in 2009 was Luang Prabang. And if I thought that place was crazy and wild, I found out straight after that there are places out there that top the crazy scale. Vang Vieng is one of them. This sleepy town is famous for one activity and that’s gliding down a river in a truck tire hopping from bar to bar (aka “tubing”).

It’s worth standing still for a few seconds at the ride from Luang Prabang to Vang Vieng took around 7 hours and took us through incredibly beautiful landscapes. Laos is very mountainous, especially in the north, so this is the reason for the long drive. It was worth every second of it.

Hedonism

The definition of Hedonism fits this town perfectly. Everything that should be forbidden happens in this place and it’s impossible to avoid it. At least it was impossible to avoid it back in 2009. There were bars that were famous for serving hallucinogen mushrooms or mushroom whiskey to its customers; and drugs and alcohol were the main themes of the town. In regards to tubing, in my time I think there were over nine bars lined along the Nam Song River. Nowadays the town has quieted down a lot according to different sources. There are only four or five bars left because in 2011 alone at least 27 people died of irresponsible behavior on the river. Most of the people have died jumping off cliffs. The water can be incredibly shallow in some places so a misjudged jump can mean breaking bones or worse on the many rocks in the river.

I am not sad about these changes. Even though this was a huge thing in my time, I was scared during my whole stay in Vang Vieng. Firstly, I was scared to go to bars, because of what they served. I didn’t want to get in trouble with the police just because I was at a certain place at a certain time. Secondly, I was scared of tubing down the river with enormous rapids that forcefully shoved my tire into rocks. Thirdly, the bartenders pulled you into their bars by throwing beer bottles at you. Fourthly, I was forced by peer pressure to jump off a bridge at one of the first bars (I researched beforehand and I knew this jump was completely safe); I’m scared of heights though so this was not my favorite activity. Fifthly, tubing was so irresponsibly managed that I was actually in a dangerous situation at night which I will describe in the next paragraph.

Tubing

I think based on the previous paragraph you get a good idea what tubing used to look like. Let me describe our day in more detail, at 11am we started off at the tube rental place where we rented our huge truck tire and a minivan drove us to the river. From there we would set off and stop at every bar along the way. It’s not important to keep ahold of the tire as there are many scattered all over the place. Some bars had nothing special, some had slides, some had ropes and some had mud volleyball; all of them had copious and irresponsible amounts of alcohol. I remained clear headed because of my aforementioned fears.

Then night arrived and it got dark. Everyone rushed to the water and disappeared. There was only one tube left and three people; two Scottish guys and myself. When it was still light out, there was music from all the bars and there were some lights. Now, after dark everything was pitch black and quiet. The Nam Song River is endless so how far should we go before we went too far? Where should we get out of the water? We didn’t see anything. We drifted along the river along with the strong current for half an hour. Then we decided the best course of action would be to leave the water and to climb on shore. This meant holding on to mangroves/ grass to avoid running down the river further and climbing into high grass that reached up to my shoulders. I was terrified because of the animals that could live in these mangroves and grasses, the boys were inebriated so they did not care; this worried me even more. They even started pushing each other around in the tall grass. The water would not have been any better though, because of the darkness we bumped into rocks all the time and my feet were getting badly hurt by dragging over rocks in shallow areas. After walking through the grass for a few minutes we found a huge metal gate (around three meters high). I shouted through the gate that we were lost and not out to hurt anyone. After not receiving any response we climbed over the gate. This sounds easier than it was. There were spikes on top of the gate, I wasn’t wearing any shoes and I’m scared of heights, but my survival instinct kicked in and I managed. After walking around the area for half an hour we randomly found a tuk-tuk standing around that brought us back to our hostel.

Conclusion

In retrospect this is one of those experiences I should’ve tried to avoid because it could’ve potentially been life threatening. What if we went down the river way too far? What if there would have been waterfalls and such in the river? What if there were snakes in the grass? What if the guy who owned the property protected by the fence didn’t like us trespassing? I am happy I survived this crazy town and I’m happy that the town is now quieter. This will be good for the locals and for tourists who would like to do the polar opposite of what we came to do. The surroundings are beautiful and it would be great to take excursions to waterfalls and to enjoy mellow rides on the river. I fully support the fact that there is hardly any tubing and I would love to come back in the future to erase the horrible memories and connect more beautiful memories to Vang Vieng.

This was actually the last destination in our five week South East Asia trip in the summer of 2009. We would pass through Vientiane in Laos and through Udon Thani in Thailand, but neither stay was long enough to leave any impression. From Udon Thani we flew to Bangkok, from Bangkok to Helsinki and from Helsinki back to Amsterdam.