Travelling in poverty is all well and good…
…But now Lauren and I are ditching that for a month of paradise on the Gulf of Thailand.
We left Laos yesterday (or maybe even the day before it’s so hard to keep track,) after having spent some time in Vang Vien. Unfortunately, Lauren and I have already encountered the first big mistake of our trip and that is not spending longer, much, much longer, in the jewel of Laos that is Luang Prabang and instead skipping onto the falaraki-esque chav-haven that is Vang Vien.
I realise that I may be being a bit harsh, so I’ll elaborate. VV is three roads arranged in a big, capital ‘F.’ In each of these roads sit a number of bars that play on their T.V.s either Friends or Family Guy almost around the clock. At first it was nice to see something familiar, but when you realise that every bar is doing it non-stop you can’t help but wish to be sitting awkwardly in a local’s house eating a spoonful of cat, anything to make you feel like you are not, in fact, sitting on your couch back in Essex. The group we were hanging out with in LP came down either the same day or the day after us and VV being such a small town, we quickly found each other again, que plenty of drinking/watching Family Guy ad nauseum.
Then came the ‘highlight’ of VV; tubing. I really enjoyed it, yea the water was grotty, yea from time to time I did genuinely fear I was going to drown and yea, I do have some cuts and bruises (though considerably less that some of the other people that went) but on the whole, floating down a fast flowing river in a rubber tube, being pulled into bars and swinging off of 25ft high swings into the water is really good fun. There was a terrible bit towards the end, as rumors are rife of farangs (foreigners) who have fallen asleep/ been too drunk/ got confused and wound up stuck at the bottom of the river for hours , awaiting rescue. As Lauren, a Canadian we met (James) and I floated further and further from the final bar, we realised this was a distinct possibility. Thankfully, we only had 2km of floating aimlessly, shouting to the laughing locals on each side of the river, before we struck the end of the tubing run.
Unfortunately, Lauren disliked tubing. Really, really disliked it. Hated it. Utterly hated it. She’s threatened to kill me if I ever make her go again, in fact. I don’t think water’s really her thing. Poor bubba, although she did put on a brave face throughout, I could tell practically from the off that she was undeniably close to being very, very upset. To make matters worse she fell out of her tube once or twice. I tubed next to her, guiding her away from reeds and holding her hand and that (ahh what a gent,) but when it came to getting into the bars we would struggle pulling ourselves in as a twosome. More than once there was a terrible ‘here we go’ feeling in our stomachs as we spiraled uncontrollably away from the nearest bar.
It also rained heavily in VV, so heavily, in fact, that we had nothing else to do other than sit inside and watch Friends…
Tags: Laos, Travel, Tubing, Vang Vien
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