Just back from an afternoon of tubing down the Nam Song River in Vang Vieng, Laos. I have to say, I was pleasantly surprised! I’d read a lot about it, from the horror stories of what it was like pre-2012, like the number of deaths (27 in 2011) and countless injuries from the drunken revellers jumping into shallow water completely intoxicated to the complete opposite of more recent years, about many of the bars being closed (read: burned) down and hardly any tourists bothering to visit any more.
What we found today I think was a happy medium, there was a decent sized crowd, happily having a couple of drinks but not pushing their luck and everyone enjoying the cruise down the river. There were 4 bars en route (I think) but they’re all really close to the start. Once we’d been dropped off by the TukTuk at the first bar, we had our obligatory free shot, had a bracelet attached to our wrists for good luck (err….), hung around, had a quick game of beer pong and collected our tubes ready for the adventure to begin, No sooner had we tucked our legs up over the side of the tube were we being thrown a bottle on a string ready to be dragged ashore into the next bar, for us this was too soon, we wanted to get into the swing of things. The other bars came along thick and fast too although only one of them shouted over and offered us the bottle on a string to be hauled in. We passed this one by too as it seemed a bit too quiet and we’d hoped they were lying and just trying to rake in the customers with their hand painted “last bar” sign…they weren’t lying.
So we just carried on, after an hour of floating, spinning and splashing our way down river we saw the sign telling us that that’s where the tubing ended, obviously we found ourselves across river from the way out so had to fight against the current, after a bit of frantic paddling we made it across and finished off the afternoon lazing in a hammock.
NB: We visited in rainy season (early September) – not that you’d ready tell but this meant the river was fairly full and therefore pretty fast flowing, I think in drier seasons, the time it takes to get down the river can easily double as the current slows down. This is something worth keeping in mind if you’re planning on getting your tube deposit back for returning it before 6pm.
