Yesterday, Derek and I did the most popular thing to do in Vang Vieng which is floating in a tractor tyre inner tube down the Nam Song river. Lonely planet forgot to mention about the animal turds or perhaps human turds floating along the river with you. Occasionally, a handful gets inside the tube and you just accept to pick it up and throw it away from you. Disgusting i know. Believe it or not this was not the highlight of our day.
The day starts off you paying $4US for a whole day of fun and then being driven by the local tuk tuk driver to the top of the river with a few stops along the way- engine problems - tuk tuks are old!... As you float along you do get greeted by Vang Vieng's blessings that are its amazing limestone karst formations, jungle, and local river life. Some locals have made things easier for those who want to drink while floating along the way. The locals have set up bars ("refreshment stops") along the river banks and if you wish to stop they gladly pull you in with a home made fishing rod thing.... The bar owners have also created a home made trapeze swing thing off high, unstable platforms. It was quite scary witnessing people swinging off this and landing in a not so deep river as its dry season.
Things you could order include mushroom shakes and happy garlic bread which, naive me wanted to try not knowing exactly what "happy meant..... I didn't try it of course. Drugs are well, kind of easy to buy in Laos. I have however, fallen in love with the Lao cocktail bucket which is a mixture of whisky, lao lao (local cheap rice whisky), coke, M-150 (like red bull) and lemon. Surprisingly, I can drink the whole bucket on my own. (Proud of me Kim?).
The day was fun and tiring even though you just float along for about 6 hours. A local Lao girl at 8 years of age somewhat ruined the end of the day for us. We were close to the end of the trip and this girl pulled us in to the shore as the water was too shallow to move anywhere. We were thinking "how kind, give her some money for a tip" so Derek thought 6000Kip was generous and was waiting to hear a 'thank you' of some sort but instead the little girl demanded 10 000 kip! Brushed us off when we said no. Kids so annoying! Lesson learned... Never ever give kids money unless you've bought something.
Tomorrow we will go cave exploring.....
-Uriah
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