#checkoffthelist

We arrived in Vang Vieng. It’s a relatively small town in northern Laos. We strolled along the main road looking for 5 beds available, and ended up at Easy Go hostel, which was perfect. Great common area, great place to meet other people. Vang Vieng used to be an insanely popular backpackers spot known strictly for their tubing. People rent tubes, get driven up to the top of the river, and tube down. There are a bunch of bars on the way that everyone stops at and gets wasted. There are huge swings into the water, rocks all over the place, and no way to know how deep or shallow it is at any point. Sounds dangerous… Because it is. So many people were dying on the tubing trip. 22 people or something died last year, so about 2 months ago, they shut down the bars, and burned down the swing. Over the past few weeks, a few bars started reopening. Yesterday we did the tubing. It was definitely not the experience that people had over the past few years, but it was perfect. There were about 150 people tubing yesterday, and we all started at noon. It was not rowdy, there were not too many deadly acts, just absolutely beautiful huge mountains and cliffs surrounding the river, slowly tubing down, drinking beer, hanging out, meeting lots of great people. It takes about 6 hours to tube down for the day, including the stops at bars. Whoever your tube collides with, you using end up linking feet and chatting for an hour or so. It’s very conducive to meeting great people and having great conversation. The village of vang Vieng is really beautiful. It’s situated in the mountains, and consists of a bunch of shops selling “tubing in vang Vieng” tank tops, 5 restaurants playing Friends all day every day, one restaurant playing South Park, and then a bunch of guesthouses for the backpackers. There’s also a few bars, although they close around 11pm, when everyone walks about 15 minutes to a night club playing Top 40 music, and playing gangham style at least once every half hour. It’s very chill, but coming from Don Det, I don’t think it’s as chill as other people do. I’ve watched a lot of episodes of friends since we arrived. All the tables are on the ground with tons of pillow, and people lay, and eat, and lay more. It’s pretty awesome.

After tubing, there was not a chance of going out again. We hung out, ate din, I fell asleep watching South Park at the dinner table, and then finally got the energy to do my Vietnamese visa! I was running out of time for that. I should be good though. Hopefully.