Vang Vieng

In the mountains of Laos, just North of Vientienne is a gorgeous river town along a wall of karsts, sitting like a green saw blade left on the ground.  Villagers still live their simple lives, herding cattle through streams and harvesting their rice in conical hats.  This slice of the simple, idlyic pastoral life in the spectacular scenery is not the main draw of this popular town; it is the orgy 4km upriver.   We jumped out of the bus in Vang Vieng with the typical dropped jaw the Nothern Laos scenery seems to inspire.  It was late, so we booked a crappy room in the center of town which we shared with a giant spider, then migrated the next morning to a quiet, beautiful riverside hut on the other side of the river.  We were excited about the twon's famous tubing.  The hot weather seemed perfect for floating down a quiet river with a beer in th shadow of the towering wall of limestone mountains.  Our first day was quiet; we hung out in the cafe with Diogo, Blancdine, and Marion, sheltering ourselves fro mthe torrential rains that were coming like clockwork every afternoon.   We saved the tubing for our second day, my birthday.  Diogo, Michelle and I grabbed our tubes and caught a taxi to the start of the famous river run.  WE'd read of the line of makeshift bars on the banks, expecting little huts, jutting into the river with ropes to grab while we ordered beers for the lazy flaot down the peaceful river.  The reality was far from our expectations.   The makeshift bars were actually a circus of daytime nightclubs. At the start of the river was a young Laos man dispensing shots to everyone wishing to cross the bridge, a troll of debauchery taking our souls and sobriety as a toll to pass.  The first bar was packed, which was odd since it was the lamest of the bunch.  A fat, drunk Canadian woman stood at the entrance with a bottle of Tiger Whiskey, the national cheap hooch of Laos, pouring shots directly down our throats.  We'd only been off the taxi for three minutes and we'd already started getting buzzed.    The dance music blared, echoing off the mountains as the British trash danced and yelled. It was as if East London had found a wormhole transporting the saturday night party to the prettiest place in Laos.  We positioned ourselves in the far end of the bar, trying to reprogram ourselves from our expectations of  a quiet river float.    That morning, I had awokedn to a broken laptop, crawled upon the previous night during a poweroutage, so I wsn't really in the mood to party, but as the cheap alcohol did its work, I couldn't help but notice the crazy fun downriver.  I wanted to hate it.  This was a scar on the place, a bastardized picture of disparity between a wild party and a setting so beautiful, one didn't have to do a thing but sit and stare in silent contentment, but I just couldn't ignore the ziplines.   "Why are we sitting here?"  Let's tube to the second bar." I said over the dance music, revelling, and occassional yelling of "Woo!" followed by a splash.  "They have ziplines over there!"   Diogo still had his beer to finish. I passed on one myself, not wanting to pay the insane prices, plus free whiskey was being distributed in every method by IV.  He finished the beer and we threw the tubes in and headed 100m downriver to the next bar.   The river was swift; the bar was situated on near rapids.  Burly Laos youths, looking more like inner-city hooligans sat the shore armed with tethered life preservers that they threw with astounding accuracy.  Despite catching the floating ring, manoevering the tube to shore was not easy, but I made it.  Michelle drifted downriver, we never saw her again.   No, she caught a rope hanging from a tree and eventually made it to land.  We were rewarded for our troubles with more free whiskey.   The star of the second bar a thirty foot high rope swing that most men used to show off their upper-boddy strength to the trashy drunk women with their eternal cigarettes.  Lesser men belly flopped.  I tried it one time, landing safely, but with the slippery conditions from the pouring rain, the speed of the river and my loosening grip with sobriety, I didn't feel like pushing my luck further. I was merely content continually jumping off the seven foot high dock then swimming frantically to shore.   The whole idea was absurd: liquoring up large quanties of white tourists, then find way to chuck them into a raging, deep river from ridiculous heights.  I had to wonder if this wasn't a secret form of warfare: kill the youth of Europe with booze as the Western powers did with bombs in the 60's and 70's to the youth of Laos.  Again, I wanted to hate it so much, but I couldn't: I was having too much fun.   I drank more and dnaced around the mobs of people with makeshift headband advertising their penis size.  Some colored theirselves with crude body paint. One man had even painted "I love rape" upon his chest. (I didn't get that one either.)  Further down the river was a zipline, which I used mulitiple times, going forwards, backwards, dropped from high and even rode it all the way to spring at the end, with painful results.  The whole idea of "tubing" was a formality really.  Very few people tubed more than 200m.  As the evening approached, we ventured to the last main bar, featuring a 50ft high tiled slide that was infamous for its lethal reputation, and fun.  I couldn't stop sliding, it was stupidly fast, high and the adrenaline danger mixed with the booze gave me a special kind of high.   As the sun was setting, the three of us actually tubed the river.  We were trailblazers, the only ones who actually floated down the river.  The bars ended after only a kilometer and we drifted into th darkness.   Three miles is not a long way, but sitting in a tube in the complete darkness made it last forever.  A chilling torrential downpour started with only a kilometer left, and it was quite unnerving to sit alone in the dark, in the rain with lighting all around us.  Diogo had dissappeared; he was quite drunk and feared the worst, especially after he didn't return to our meeting place that night.  Our hut was right on the river and we intended to float right to our door, but we were so cold from sitting, wet in the river that we docked at the first sign of civilization.  It was one of the best birthdays I've ever had.   Diogo emerged the next morning and we convinced Marion adn Blancdine to join us on the river for a second round, sans tubes.  Michelle chose to take it easy and stayed at home.  There was no caution this second day, we embraced the party full force.  I nearly won a limbo contest, right after sitting on the ground in a long line of open mouths as a Canadian guy emptied a whole bottle in our mouths.  The swings and ziplines were sadly shut down; it is unclear exactly what happened, but something between a broken leg and multiple deaths had occured the previous day, none of which surprised me.   I got drunk, really drunk.  We all capped off the evening with a shot of Lao Lao.  I looked to the moutains, raised my glass and begged for forgiveness, then jumped on the waterslide again.