Hooray we finally made it!!

After a week and a half of sleeping in, playing queen of spades, eating dinner, then getting drunk with the A-Team, we finally made it tubing on our last day in Vang Vieng, Laos. The sun was shining, we didn’t wake up hung-over and were rip roaring ready to go!

Typical sight to see in Vang Vieng, Laos

There are two tubing stations on the same street which are impossible to miss. Depending on the day of the week depends on which tubing station you go to. There really is no difference between them. Same style/quality tubes, same rules and timelines and same line up of tuk tuk’s outside waiting to take you and as many others they can fit into the back. A tube rental costs 55,000 KIP (about $7 CDN) plus a 60,000 KIP deposit (about $8 CDN). All tubes are due back by 6pm. If you return it late they only give back 30,000 KIP of your deposit. Reasons why its best to leave earlier then later to go tubing! The river runs slow and take about 4 hours of floating time to get back to town. That does not include the time you might spend drinking away at any of the riverside bars along the way.

Various menus and treats you can find at any bar

The bars however are all placed right next to each other except for “The Last Bar” (and in our opinion the best bar!). The music of each one is blaring at full decibel level and train-wrecking with each other. Bars also have giant swings, giant slides, and other means of random entertainment aside from cheap buckets and beers. But really the main reason to stop at any bar is to have a drink. However, their “special” menus do also tempt the curious. Or maybe you wish to try some snake whiskey? Really, you can find whatever you want if you just look for it!

Gorgeous!

Everyone is in good spirits and having the time of their lives. How can you not be gleeful as you float down a river in a tube? Which is really the best part of the whole experience. Just sitting back and looking at the sky and amazing mountain scenery with your feet latched onto your friends tubes and just letting the river take you away. Some spots are so slow and peaceful while other spots have a wee bit of a rapid. My favorite parts of the day were when no bar was in sight or earshot and it was only you, your friends, your buzz, and mother nature. Perfect.

Fishing for tubers at “Last Bar”

Because of our time spent drinking at the bars, watching Adam use the giant swings, and talking to randoms we did not make it to the end of tubing. We tried our best but it quickly turned dark out and became quite scary and cold on the water. Once you past “Last Bar” there is nothing for a long time. No lights, no nothing! So we decided to head to shore, walk up a dark farming road with hopes we can make it to a major road to find a tuk tuk. Luckily we were successful!

Good times!

I really wish we managed to get ourselves tubing earlier, as we all agreed if we were staying in town longer we would totally do it again and spend less time at the bars so we could just enjoy the float part some more. So, if your heading to Vang Vieng don’t be like us and wait till your last day to go! Skip those buckets for one night and make it out there early!

Please note this is a story about my birthday that was back in March!

There we were spending another night rolling the dice with the A-Team for free buckets at the Sakura bar in Vang Vieng, Laos. Our original plan was to play some pool with each other for a bit and make it an early night so we could get on some tubes for my birthday the next day. Every thing was going according to plan until a traveling team of Aussies arrived and challenged us for our pool table. Conversations of whose country is best was started and tales of how loved ones met each other. Somehow, things got blown out of proportion and we found ourselves drowning in buckets, and horribly loosing at pool. Next thing we knew, we lost the table and were sitting as just the 4 of us again in a small booth. Maybe it was the Aussies plan? Drown us in their tales of love, sorrow, and country battles and get them real drunk so we graciously bow out and let them take over the table…

Suddenly, as we sat there in our small booth exchanging the typical “I love you guys” drunk babble while also holding the most important conversation with Anna about the movie Milk, her Casio watch flashed midnight. It was now my birthday! The next thing I knew, I was being serenaded by the best bucket fueled version of “Happy Birthday” while another round of buckets was presented infront of us. It took us awhile to finish these buckets, and it really might not of been the best idea to even finish them, but we did. We then figured we really should get to bed with the best intentions to go tubing for my birthday.

Well, we awoke still drunk in the late morning to a sky filled of mopey grey clouds. The air was even cool and when the wind came ripping through it was almost like winter. None of us felt comfortable wearing swimsuits and being partially wet all day and we also were feeling like ran over trash from the night before. Group consensus, as much as it sucked, no tubing on my birthday.

We decided to get ourselves a good breakfast to try and fight the hangover, choosing a restaurant with a river view. But their breakfast menu was not looking very impressive to me. I flipped through the rest of the menu and voila! I see they have poutine on the menu! Just days before we were talking about how we missed it with some Canadians we met on the river. It sounded like the perfect thing to bring a little sunshine to my day. Who says you can’t have poutine for breakfast on your birthday? Apparently, Laos does. Unfortunately to match with the theme of the day, my poutine arrived looking like soup. Boo-urns!

After breakfast we decided to part for a bit to relax and made plans to meet up later to play some pool. This is when Scott and I decided to head back to Sakura to use their free wifi, drink some coffee and maybe watch a movie. Apparently this was a bad idea. Soon as we got online, we found our website with absolutely no content on it. All of our posts and hard work on this blog over the past 6 months was gone. No rhyme or reason, no back ups, no nothing. Just gone! Even better yet, we couldn’t even post on our site. We would just get error messages. WTF?

So yeah, Happy Birthday to me! Wake up feeling like shit, the weather is too crappy to go tubing, had a soupy train wreck of a poutine breakfast, and all my work on this blog that I have poured my heart and soul into is completely gone with no sign of ever coming back! At that moment I just wanted to crawl back into bed and hopefully this would have all just been a bad dream. But no, it was now time to meet up again with the A-Team.

Luckily, Adam and Anna are great people and really helped to lift my spirits for the rest of the day. We played some pool and for the first time I actually did decent. They also surprised me just before a game of Queen of Spades with the most thoughtful present ever! Scott had forgotten our Altec Lansing speaker in our bungalow on Koh Samui. We had been traveling now without any speaker for our iPod and casually mentioned it to Adam and Anna in a conversation days ago. Somehow, they remembered this and came up with the brightest idea to buy me a new portable speaker for my birthday, paired with a great handmade card!

They worked with what was available in Vang Vieng, which really isn’t much… And of course, being backpackers much like us were on a pretty tight budget. With these strikes against them they still manage to find a delicious looking portable speaker for me. Delicious because it came in the shape of an apple that folded out into two speakers with a holder for your ipod. How awesome is that? I was super pleased!

The rest of the day was pretty uneventful, ate some dinner and made it an early night. With only 1 day left in Vang Vieng we really needed to go tubing the following day no matter what the excuse. It would be a shame to spent almost 2 weeks in Vang Vieng and never tube down the river.

I really shouldn’t of tried out my new speaker on the day of my birthday just before bed. With the already huge lists of things not working out. We plugged it into our ipod and all we could hear was static interference unless it was turned on way too loud to enjoy it. I must of jinxed it, just like everything else that day! Too Bad… But it was the thought that counts as receiving that gift truly was the best part of my birthday! THANK YOU ADAM AND ANNA!

As for loosing all of our posts on our blog, the next day we updated our wordpress and magically everything reappeared just like how it was before! Even though our database showed we had 0MB, it just reappeared! It truly was just a bad day where anything that can go wrong will go wrong.

Meet Leonard the lazy leopard. We met him when we went to Safari Park in Kanchanaburi, Thailand. Much like us, he likes laying around and playing all day. Hunting humans, eating food and enjoying the good life. But we’ve got a bunch of posts lined up for Vietnam, so stay tuned!