Our first destination in Laos was Vang Vieng, home of the infamous tubing down the Nam Song river. We had heard many stories, both good and bad, about the tubing, and thought we were well-prepared to take on the adventure. So in order to not finish tubing after dark, we decided to start early. At 10am we arrived at Bar 1, only to realize that the fun of tubing is being with the crowds, that usually don't show up until noon or 1pm. So we spent the first 3 hours drinking at Bar 1, and ziplining and jumping off huge rope swings into the river. For some reason, I had decided that I was totally capable of doing a backflip off the swing, even though I've never successfully landed a backflip before. And I was wrong, but fortunately learned my lesson by only getting the wind knocked out of me.
When we did enter our tubes, we only stayed in them for about 30 seconds, as the Laosians at Bar 3 threw us ropes and pulled us into their bar, where we spent another hour or so drinking and ziplining. This continued for the next few hours, as we spent minimal time tubing, and most of our time in the various bars. One of the bars was known as the mudpit bar, and when Ashley started throwing mud at me, I took the opportunity to exact some revenge on her, for my broken nose. We both ended up covered in mud, but unlike Ashley, I didn't end up with any in my mouth. At the last bar, in addition to the ziplines and rope swings, there was also a huge slide, which according to urban legends, one or two girls died on it a few months ago. Thus, it is known as the Death Slide, and gets lots of customers. It's hard to imagine how these girls died, but I guess with the quantities of alcohol consumed on the river, it's not too surprising. This is also the last bar, and from there we had about 1.5 hours of actual tubing down the river to reach the end of the course. So I guess saying that we went tubing that day isn't a complete lie.
The next day, we chilled out at the blue lagoon. And the following day, I decided I wanted to spend the day at the tubing bars, though I decided I wasn't going to tube. After reaching the last bar, I was prepared to take a tuk-tuk back into town, but a guy I met that day decided he didn't feel like tubing, and gave me his tube, which I rode down the rest of the river with a group I also met that day. Most of this tubing was done after darkness fell, which wasn't the best idea, but since we were a fairly large group, it was ok.
After 2 days, I was all tubed out (kinda weak considering I met some people who had been "tubing" for 30, 80, and even 260 consecutive days), and we decided to head north to Luang Prabang. We spent one of our days at the Kuang Si waterfall, which to date on this trip is the biggest and most awe-inspiring of all the waterfalls I've seen. A few days later, we took a bus north to Nong Khiaw, but immediately boarded a boat to Mong Noi. From there, we did a day trek through the jungle, stopping to admire some caves. We continued north, across endless rice fields, until we reached the tiny village of Ba Na. This was the first taste of true rural life in Laos that we saw, and it was nice change of the pace from the touristy cities we were in before. The children were eager to have us take their pictures, and then see themselves on our cameras.
Unfortunately, that morning Benami started feeling sick, and by night he was in really bad shape. When we got back to Luang Prabang the next day, at the hospital they concluded that he had Dengue Fever, or something similar. A few days of rest and medicine and he was as good as new.
While there was more of Laos I wanted to see, due to time and budget constraints, visiting the South of the country didn't make much sense, and I decided I was going to head east directly into Northern Vietnam. And because of some horror stories I read and heard about, I decided that crossing the border by land by myself would be a nightmare of an ordeal, and chose to fly both to save me the headache, and to also not start Vietnam off on the wrong foot, getting scammed and extorted at the border.
And with Ashley's flight from Saigon scheduled for two weeks later, I knew that I was going to split off from her and Benami and Vietnam since they'd be rushing through the country. And also, I was looking forward to the opportunity to travel on my own. Up until then, I hadn't spent more than a handful of nights on my own in the entire 5 or so months of traveling, and decided it was about time to do so. Only time would tell if I'd enjoy it as much, though I had a feeling it would change my trip completely, and only for the better.
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