Woke up feeling pretty hungover this morning...seems to be a regular thing recently...

So today we're doing what we came here to do....TUBING!! Basically, tubing is floating down the Nam Song River on a tractor inner tube and being thrown a rope and pulled into bars...

First off we went to get a tubing t-shirt - makes us look cooler and in with the crowd. We bumped into the Irish couple, Amiee and Darren, that we met on the plane to Laos and had breakfast (actually, was more like lunch). They were also going tubing today so we ended up all going together. We were quite late starting actually, it was 1.30pm by the time we bought our tubing ticket. It costs 115,000 Kip (£9) but 60,000 Kip is a deposit, and that includes a tuk-tuk up to bars on the river.

We got dropped off (offered a free whiskey shot straight away) at the first busy bar - Q Bar on the river! Didn't even need to tube there. Instead, we had to walk along another rickety bamboo bridge. First thing is one the bar staff puts a cotton bracelet on you for free shots and buckets back in town later! The bar was just full of absolutely mental drunk people. It was only like 2pm and these guys were so drunk. They must have been out very early.
I was still feeling a bit hungover (had a bit if the shakes too) from last night so had a vodka and redbull to give me a kickstart. It was just funny to watch everybody, especially those on the rope swings. The music was blasting out too, god knows what the locals think!

We got up to go to the next bar, but there were no tubes left!! Didn't matter because it was actually back over the bridge and the next bar was just down on the right. We didn't stay there too long because we wanted to get ahead of the crowd a bit. Still busy in the next place though.

There's a speciality here of alcohol (think it's whiskey!) with massive wasps in the bottle...apparently makes it stronger...
Everybody drinks buckets here as well, 30,000 Kip (£2.35) for a lao lao whiskey cocktails...tastes alright if you have 7up and lots of fresh lime in. They last ages and there's a lot of alcohol in, so it's nit an expensive day. Can take your bucket to the next bar as well.

It was actually the tubing Bucket Bar, same owner as the one in town. As soon as we walked on the decks there I had a whiskey shot poured into my mouth - I wasn't allowed to say no...awful, not having another. There's a big zip line and a high diving board so we were watching everyone on those. On the zip line, instead of dropping before the end, loads of people were holding on until they hit the end so they were doing summersaults in the air!! It was really funny to watch but I think a lot of them will have some sort of injury by the end of it. People were doing all kinds of stupid stuff like going down in couples or hanging upside down holding on with their feet...really funny to watch but very dangerous. It's no wonder that there are so many people hobbling around town.

There are actually a few people who die here every year, and there were two people who died only in the last couple of weeks!! One guy died because somebody landed on top of him, presumably from the swings etc. Thought we'd not bother telling anybody about that stuff until we'd actually done tubing! People just get too drunk and do really idiotic things - it's a dangerous places with all the rocks, and obviously there's no regulation for stuff like this in Laos!

It got really busy in there - crazy party atmosphere! The music is blasting put, the sun is out and everybody is out to have a good time.
Staff were giving out shots (I only had one all day by the way!) and putting bracelets on us for free stuff tonight. Then they started with red head bands. One of the staff was writing all kinds of stupid things (that I can't repeat) on them and it was funny reading all the ones people had on. Loads of people had writing all over their bodies too...it's like the best place ever for people watching because there is so much going on.

Tubing was brilliant! Really loved it! Only thing is, we didn't really do any tubing!! We spent more time in the bars and the bars are really close to each other. We tubed down to one bar which literally took 30 seconds. I had the rope thrown to me to be pulled in. And then we tubed down to the last bar which was fairly far.
I've got plenty of video and pictures as well - so glad I brought the camera tubing.

By the way, Internet has been pretty poor in Laos which is why we've not been putting pictures up or been calling people on Skype!

Tubing is one of the best things we've done and so glad we decided to come to Laos!!

We just made it back in time to get our deposit back. It was 5.55am and the tube had to be returned by 6pm.
We had another drink and then all went back to get changed because we were soaked. All my money was soaked too!

Back out partying again!! Haha. First some food though. Went down to Oh La La again. I was talking to a couple from England we met last night called Tom and Jenny for a while and they've invited us to stop with them in Sydney! They're stopping at a mates place but said it won't be a problem. We've already got accommodation booked in Sydney, but we're going to see what the cancellation policy is.

They were really slow getting our drinks and food. We kept asking for our free buckets and ended up getting 4 free buckets - they got confused!
We did the whole thing again tonight - Q Bar, Bucket Bar, but went home at 12 - needed a decent nights sleep!! Had a fantastic day and night with Amiee and Darren and all the other people we met.

YOU really need to visit Vang Vieng in your life!

(had to rush this again, because I'm so behind! Don't forget to change the date at the top to see the other posts!)