Tubing in Vang Veing

The minute we stepped foot in Asia all we heard was ‘tubing in Vang Veing’.  Reluctantly , we gave it a try and boy was it everything we expected and more.

Basically, you rent a tube for around $4 and get taken to the top of the river and float down stopping off at many cocktail bars. Within 3 minutes, there are locals along the bank enticing you in for a drink – they have big long bamboo sticks that you grab so they can pull you in  – it’s brilliant.

All the bars have these crazy zip lines and swing ropes that go out over the water, sometimes up to 20m high (see the pics) . The local BeerLao costs about $1 and most throw in free shots of the local Lao Lao liqueur. The more adventurous can order happy shots containing magic mushrooms, opium or marijuana.

Loads of alcohol (and drugs if one wished) mixed with swing ropes and zip lines makes for a great afternoon. As with most of these countries, there’s not much for safety standards, so many were carrying bruises or worse as the day progressed, but I guess that makes it all the more fun. 

We had so much fun we stayed at the last bar too long and ended up tubing down the river in the dark – a little scary.  It was definitely the most adrenalin filled day of our trip so far.

We used our underwater housing unit and took a ton of pics and some videos which we are unable to show you.  The last pic is my favourite, me heading down the water slide head first – Sam only managed to capture my legs – you do go pretty fast and I landed flat on the water – it did hurt!

Five of us stuck together for the adventure, photos include Helen and Claire from England, Megan from the US and ourselves.

If you’re ever in Laos, head for Vang Veing!

This entry was posted on Wednesday, October 22nd, 2008 at 5:32 am and is filed under 07-Laos. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.