Tubing in Laos

Spent a few days in Vang Vieng, Laos. Vang Veing is a cool little town known for its river tubing. You can rent a tube for $4 and then they take you to the top of the river and drop you off with your tube. Within 3 minutes, there are people along the side of the river trying to entice you to come for a drink in their bars along the side of the river. They all have these big long sticks that they hold out for you to grab so that they can pull you in. It's brillaint. The best part is that all these bars have these crazy zip lines and swing ropes that go out into the water. The local BeerLao costs you about 50 cents a beer and most of them throw in free shots of the local Lao Lao liquour. Mix them in with the swing ropes and zip lines, and it makes for a good afternoon. As with most of these countries, there's not much for safety standards here, but I guess that makes for all the more fun. I have tons of pics, but my pic site is no longer working (camera broke, day pack tore, pic site doesn't work.....think its time to pack it in on the trip!). I've posted a couple below though, and also have some videos.










We had so much fun that we stayed at the last bar too long, and ended up tubing down the river in the dark at the end. It turned out to be so much fun, that we did it again a couple of days later. Day 2 ended early though due to a little incident that my buddy Greg had. Thanks to the liquid courage, we had been doing backflips off the swing ropes. I challenged him to try doing a double backflip, which he did.....almost. When he came up out of the water, his nose was bleeding and I realized that it was no longer as straight as it once was. Turns out his knee hit his face and broke his nose. The best part was taking him to the hospital. I was in the 'emergency' room with him, and I still had a beer in my hand. Greg was a good sport though and let me video tape him getting his nose reset.



The first pic of me with all they kids was me playing my Laos song that I made. 'Sabadee' means hello in Laos. I went around singing a song, 'Sabadee, Sabadaa, SabaDingDong'. The locals ate it up. I don't know what the hell it meant, but it was a big hit. The kids in the pics look a little frightened though.



Anyway, I'm in London now, hanging out at Abi's place. Went for beers with my buddy Yann last night as well. Going to be back in Canada in a week! Talk to you all soon.