Currently I write this while cruising in a taxi, with the glare of the sun upon me I might make a few extra typos in the first portion of this, so please give me your leniency!
So, the morning after my caving and kayaking trek, I met up with Evan to get breakfast. Another well-documented phenomenon about Vang Vieng is its ample restaurants aimed entirely at Westerners that have tons of televisions set up, upon which they show endless reruns of Friends. There’s a couple of restaurants that decide to mix it up with some Simpsons, and I saw one showing Family Guy.
I don’t know if any others existed, but Friends nevertheless was everywhere. We decided to go ahead and sit at one of these places in particular, and after sitting in some more of those half-seat-half mattress reclining thingies, we soon found our will to live sucked slowly away by these reruns of Friends (and the later seasons, too! UGH!). Eventually we had to shake ourselves from this dreadful reverie and move on with our lives, and so it was that some time later, after we had already eaten everything and paid up, we made a very sudden bolt for the streets. It was nothing like your normal casual stroll out of a restaurant, it was escaping the event horizon of this black hole of a microcosm.
We strolled around some more. At some point, it might’ve even been the previous day (come to think of it, I’m pretty sure it was) we met a married couple, Alex and Anthony, who Evan had actually originally met in Phuket, Thailand, if I recall correctly. They were from Australia, and from some random backwater of a town in Australia (they didn’t speak of it in any nicer terms, so I’m not trying to be mean here for once). We agreed to meet up at some time or another to go tubing together. Whether we made this appointment the day before, or this morning, hardly matters, but at noon this day, we were to gather and tube.
So Alex and Anthony showed up a bit later, and we were all decked out in tank tops and shorts and dry bags. We went to this one tube rental location, pictured here:
To get our tubes and such. Before we get into the meat of the day, I want to make a side explanation of how the tubing industry apparently works in this town. There are two garages where they have a couple hundred tubes. At one garage, they’re mildly painted yellow, and at the other, a half-assed white paintjob rules the day. Every few days, they alternate which one of these garages is open. You go there to rent your tube, pay a certain amount plus a deposit (I think it added up to 70,000 kip), and agreed that the deposit would be forfeit if you brought the tube back after 6pm. You would bring the tube back after 6 pm. Anyone who thought otherwise was either a fool or not having a good time.
They had a sign on the side of either of these garages that explains loosely that supposedly the money made from this venture goes back into the community. Here’s a picture of that sign:
Its hard to know whether there’s any truth to this. I for one sure hope there is, though, as there’s absolutely no question that us raucous Western youths are endlessly exploiting the peculiar nature of this town, and I wholeheartedly encourage any people’s attempts to squeeze some money out of such of a situation, up to a point. I mean, you know, they still have to price it so that us Western youths will stay there, you know?
Anyway, make of it what you will. Maybe the money goes to a good place, maybe it doesn’t.
Along with the tubes, you can rent a dry bag if you want. Most people just buy a small slightly bigger than wallet sized thing that they put their wallet, maybe a phone, maybe a normal point-and-shoot camera in to. I wanted to bring my SLR, though, so, I had to get something bigger, hence I rented a dry bag, for about 25,000 kip plus or minus 5,000.
My friends, newfound and otherwise, were a bit skeptical as to whether or not it would protect my camera, but I felt pretty confident about it, though I have a tendency to be a bit careless and neglect the fine details.
After you’ve been geared up and marked with a number that corresponds with your receipt (and therefore, the ordinal of person who has rented a tube that day. I think I was #186), you’ve but one thing left, to hop onto a tuk tuk, which will take you up for no charge if you’ve rented a tube, or 15,000 kip if you haven’t rented a tube.
So tuk-tuk we did, and we were off like a shot. We got dropped of a scant few minutes later, at a location that was somewhat bereft of charm, looking for all the while more like a construction-site-in-waiting than anything else, but just over the ridge was where it all started.
We dropped our tubes off carefully in a pile, so that we could know where our particular tubes were. It became obvious a bit afterwards that this was a bit beside the point, as there’s no way to distinguish between the tubes at all, but still. Those were OUR tubes. No one else was going to put their hands on them, if we had anything to say about it.
From there it was a few stair steps down to the first bar. This one was pretty packed, and the textures of the place hit you thusly: First, the pumping bass of whatever music they were playing. I heard a lot of MGMT, but there were certainly all manner of typical Western songs there. Secondly, the screams of people jumping off of a swing that was at least 10 meters (30 feetish) high, holding on for dear life as they figured out when they would finally be able to let go. Third, people watching the screaming swinging people. Fourth, promoters of other bars spray painting and using markers and bits of cloth to brand people in any way they could to remind them that other places existed from which to procure alcohol. Fifth, the bar itself and its frosty beverages.
The second one held the biggest stranglehold on my mind, having never seen anything quite like it before. It was soon determined that we’d all be doing it as well, and though I agreed, I was pretty paralysed with fear from the inside. At this very moment of writing, The National’s “Mistaken For Strangers” is playing in my earbuds, and somehow its music seems an extremely fitting companion for the sensations I felt in this situation, but more on that later.
Before there would be any swinging, we made our way to the bar and got ourselves some Beer Lao, naturally. A couple tall cans of that later, plus some free shots of snake whiskey (just a jug of whiskey with a decent sized dead snake coiled within it), which Evan would go on to describe as radioactive in taste, and the chest-thumping bravado would begin. By this time, we had seen many a person take the proverbial-and-literal dive, and some of them did it with an astounding grace, doing flips, or holding themselves aloft with legs instead of hands. Some people went off in pairs, and some people were the antithesis of graceful, being unable to hold on firmly to the bar as soon as it passed beyond its low nadir and began to lift again, slamming straight into the water.
The water itself was perhaps not as comforting in appearance as you may desire. I was assured it was deep enough to not get hurt, but still shallow enough that from the very bottom to the very top was almost no space at all. Much further along, and it appeared as though those who really took a shot at it could propel themselves straight into some rocks and go out with a splat.
No one was injured while I was around, though, with the exception of the occasional wounded pride. So there’s that. If you’re doing something dumb, and nothing goes wrong, that makes it good, right? Right?
Anyway, out of us, Evan was the first to go up a rickety ladder to the platform off of which the swinging would begin. He jumped with aplomb, swang back and forth a couple times, and let go at a point that was probably 2/3 of its apex, at a point where the velocity was pretty low, letting him drop cleanly straight down into the water. It looked like he had a pretty good time of it.
And so each of the others took their turns. Of them, I think only Alex had to think twice about it, but still she didn’t hesitate much. Here’s a picture of each of them doin their thing:
Next, it was to be my turn, but I’ll be damned if I wasn’t still terrified. I took another snake shot, then walked up the trembly ladder to my fate, whatever it should be. On top of the rickety platform, with the little Lao guy pulling the swing handle of doom over closer, my knees gave out, and after I looked down over the edge to the water below, it got even worse. It was pretty obvious how much I was hesitating. My friends below cheered me on.
They knew that, basically, I can’t swim very well, and have never swam in water that was deeper than my height before. Interestingly enough, a couple of my new friends had previous experience as lifeguards, and I think Evan had actually previously rescued some guy out of a lake or something like that. This made me feel a lot better about the whole idea of jumping into the deep end, but it still wasn’t quite enough to push me over the edge.
There was a small line, so I told the next guy to go ahead and take my spot. I didn’t back down, tough I just let the guy jump ahead of me. I still had every intention of going, and I knew that I’d have to go immediately after letting that guy go.
So after he went off, I walked back up and took the reins, and just went for it.
My god, the rush. At first, nothing but a sensation along the lines of “HOLY @#%” filled my mind, all the way from leaping off through the entire first arc. I was shocked to see how much of a pull there was on me from my own momentum and gravity, and how flattened my grip against the handle was. Everything soared, and I couldn’t believe how much air I was cutting through.
I certainly wasn’t going to let off at the apex, nor was I going to let go on the first swing. I swang a couple more times to appreciate the sensation of going through the air like that without dying, and then let off fairly close to the water, to make it a short swim back to the bank.
I WAS able to swim back, which was nice, if perhaps only a modest accomplishment. Everyone congratulated me, and we posed for a nice little post jump group photo:
After this, I got another Beer Lao, then ran right back up the ladder to go for another dive, hoping that it’d come more easily this time. It certainly did, and I was able to relish it a bit more this time.
From there, it was time to get a move on, so we grabbed our tubes, ran down to the water, and pushed off. Having already tubed in those caves the day before, it felt pretty natural. We floated down not that far, just to the next bar, and found out firsthand how it is you actually get over to them, as the current of the river wasn’t exactly conducive to getting us actually to the bars.
Instead, each bar has its staff of throwers. They stand atop their platforms, and swing bottles half filled with water, tied to some light rope, flinging them in the direction of floater-bys.
If you want to go in, you just grab onto the rope, and they reel it in. It’s kind of funny at first, but after two or three times its almost reflexive to get yourself pulled in.
The second bar is also a pretty hopping place. In fact, most of the action, as in, most of the people drinking, stay within the first couple bars, and never really wander any further down. This one also gave free snake shots, as well as free bananas, oddly enough. They had a diving platform and a zipline that people were using to crash into the water;
Evan was keen on using the zipline, so here’s a picture of him looking ridiculous:
Anthony followed suit, and managed to look even more foolish by not letting go before the handle hit the end of the line, causing him to do a pretty crazy flip:
I chose to stick to the swings for now, though, and gave this a pass. We hung out at this platform a bit, soaking it all in a bit, but there wasn’t a whole lot else to do in the area, so we got a move on again soon after, going to . . . I think it was the Jungle Bar, but I could be wrong. The names hardly matter, anyway, right? This had a nice big patio, a swing, and cheap buckets, and free french fries!
This ended up being our kingdom for the day. We met so many people here, ultimately. There was a group of Scottish(Irish?) girls, a couple of British guys and a fellow American named Tom. I couldn’t say for sure, but I’d wager we stayed at this bar for two hours or more. The first order of priority was the acquisition of some cheap liquor; it was happy hour, and a bucket of whiskey and coke cost a hair over a dollar, and so we spent a few dollars. The exceedingly friendly Lao lady who worked there doled out plate after plate of soggy hot french fries, which felt extremely nourishing at the time, or, at the very least, sustaining.
Actually, this was the first of the riverside bars that had an all-Lao staff, which was in a way a pleasant change in its own right. Aside from the lady, who appeared to be in her late 20s, there were also two young teenage boys working there, doing lasso duty, as well as manning the swing platform.
Soon enough, we were going off of the swing at this place. When I crawled up the ladder this time, it was suddenly frightening all over again. So much for conquering fears, eh? The problem here, though, was that, compared to the previous swing platform, this one seemed a lot more rickety. The previous platform had been nestled against a tree, in some large branches, which somehow gave me a mild sense of security at the very least upon the platform. This, however, was completely exposed and vulnerable, and that somehow added to the gravity of the situation.
Most of my friends had already gone off it a time or two. Here’s a few pictures of that:
When I crawled up, though, I found I just couldn’t do it, for a time at least. I actually walked back down the ladder for a bit, to consume some more soggy fries and have another gulp or two from my bucket (with lime!), trying to steel myself up a bit more to go yet again. Before I clambered back up, though, I took some pictures of the area, and the trash heaps hidden just behind the bar shack, not to mention a few pictures of us just hanging out.
Here’s also a couple of group shots we took for the photo albums:
Clamber back up I did, though, and I held on for dear life as I ripped off of the platform yet again. When I didn’t immediately die, I felt vindicated and freed once more, and it was a sure thing that I’d go off another fifty million times in the next hour or so.
I hit the water over, and over again, until I developed bruises in places that I didn’t know could bruise. In the spirit of the times, I went off in pairs with each of the girls, and with Anthony too. Boy, the first time going on one of those tandem with another person was pretty crazy too. We made sure to not let go at the same time, lest we should crack our skulls against each other. The pull of our body masses against the handle upon the nadir of the swing was immense, and it seemed almost as though the rope screamed in protest against our upward momentum, but it held true.
Here’s some pictures of those swings, too:
Eventually, I had swung myself exhausted. Somewhere along the line, Alex told me I was a legend, which apparently is Aussie slang for saying pretty cool, given that I was as scared of the water and the fall as I was, yet still kept with it. That was certainly the only time I’ve ever heard that of myself, and I don’t expect to hear it again, so that was pretty cool. Maybe, just maybe, it convinced me to go careen off of the water another few times.
Every time I hit the water, I went a little bit further and a little deeper into the water, from a slightly higher spot in the swing. This pushed my limits further than I had ever anticipated to do, but every time there were no consequences to my folly, I was emboldened to go that much further.
I’ll admit there was still just a bit of panic in my mind every time it took more than a second to breach the surface of the water, but I think I was still able to keep that panic largely out of my body movements, so it was all good. And everytime I got to shore, I’d go through a rerun of the harshness of the river rocks trying by all their might to pierce the pads of my feet, and failing while hurting all the same, then clambering back up on to the platform for another round of french fries.
Somewhere in the mix of my actions, other people came and went, joining and leaving our little party. But we ruled that platform, that afternoon, by and large, and we ruled it with benevolence and aplomb.
Finally, we decided we had better get a move on, as the sun receded behind the mountains to our side. There was at least one last bar that we wanted to make it to, which was home to the fabled Slide of Death. We had heard vague whisperings of this monstrosity, dressing it up as a beast that could of itself swallow us whole, and naturally we had to go check it out.
It was a slide comprised of bath tile that measured probably thirty feet long or more, with a good solid kick at the end to send people sailing into the river. Supposedly, someone had died upon it mere weeks ago, but the details were sketchy, and frankly, not wanted.
So we set off in our tubes once more, and scooted down the gentle current to be washed along to the place of legends. I positioned myself behind some rocks to take some ambush photos of my friends, who were lagging a little bit. Unfortunately, those photos didn’t come out very well, as I forgot that I had lent my camera for a short time to that American, Tom, just a little prior, who had messed around with the ISO settings and such, and I didn’t reset them, much to the gratefulness of Laura and Alex in particular, who had decided to swim instead of float down the river, and were none too happy with my surprise photos of them.
This particular bar required a purchase of something in order to make use of any of its amusements (it also had what was probably the highest swing on the river), but the prices weren’t any higher than anywhere else, so it didn’t feel all that intrusive. Who doesn’t want another can of Beer Lao, anyway?
So immediately, we bought our refreshments, whereupon we were asked to present our hands so that they could mark one of our fingernails with some crude nail polish, which was our ticket for the “rides”, if you will. As it turned out, they used a different color every day to keep people from trying to cheat the system. Also, as I found out, checking the number of primitively painted nails on people’s hands was a decent way of gauging the duration, thus far, of their stay in Vang Vieng.
I wasn’t quite ready to send myself hurtling off of that terrible titan of tile yet, though I knew I’d go at least once, so I stood to the side to watch others take their hand at it. I sat beside a fire that kept me company in the waning light of the day, and saw guy after guy go flying into the air. Everyone managed to make it back up without any serious injuries, though there were certainly some pretty raw backsides from misplaced contact with the surface of the water.
After maybe fifteen to twenty minutes of this, and a few visits to the bathroom (a natural prerequisite for me when preparing to do anything that gives me much anxiety), I gunned for it.
Before I could actually go down that slippery slide, I had to sit and wait for the Lao guy manning the top of it to call out to another guy below, who was in charge of throwing out a small lifeline tied to a smallish tube to those who went off the slide, as well as to have some water turned on to lubricate those merciless tiles. I sat on the precipice, and as soon as the guy beside me told me that everything was ready, I crossed my arms, hoped for the best, and laid down to be swept away.
It was an odd sensation, skidding along the wet tile. Its similar to skating over a brick road, but thats not a useful comparison for most of those who would be reading this now. A lot of you have bath tile around, though, so just drag your knuckles across it at a steady speed, and imagine what its like against your entire body, and perhaps you’ll get the idea.
It had some weird acoustic properties, shielding me from all sounds outside of the slide, and amplifying the sound of my body-turned-projectile. My body skidded and rotated a bit, so I used my limbs against the edges of the slide to try and direct myself a bit more in a straight line, and mere seconds later, I hit that kick at the end, which actually felt quite gentle, and suddenly I was shooting forward through the air, with nothing but hope cushioning me beneath, and yelling at the top of my lungs a yell fit for mad men. Then came the crash a fraction of a moment later, and the immediate need to surface, followed by the instinctual grab for the life line that was tossed my way.
To be honest, until I was dragged over to the rock outrcopping of the side of the platform, I didn’t have time to register much of the pain from the crash. There had been the hurt at the instant of the impact, sure, but the soreness that set in once I clambered back upon the platform was humbling.
So what did I do next? Go right back up to the top of the slide, naturally, and let my masochistic tendencies go wild once more. It was fantastic.
The girls wouldn’t actually do this even once, but Evan and Anthony both had a go or two off of the thing, too.
Once we had gotten our macho kicks out of our system, we were huddled around that fire I had stayed near at the beginning of this platform. There were actually a lot of other people at this platform, too, and though I don’t particular remember any of them, we all mingled quite a bit, and had yet another drink or two, until the last remnants of day had long since checked out. Finally, we decided it was time to head back to town and get some food to combat the tides of blood alcohol content, as well as to comfort our water-battered bodies.
Alex in particular was pretty drunk at this point, as I recall, and so she needed a bit more help than the rest of us in trying to stumble through the dark bridge and trails to get to where a lot of tuk tuks were at the ready, waiting for us muddled foreigners to call upon their services. It was a bit amusing, I’ve gotta say. Soon enough we were all piled into a tuk tuk and putting our way back to town, and, after returning our tubes and dry bags, as well as paying off the late fee for coming back after 6pm, we split up to clean ourselves up, then meet back up at the Aussie Bar for some food. Evan, Alex, Anthony and I all had to walk back in the same direction for our assorted guesthouses, whereas Laura was staying at a hostel in a different direction, as were the Irish girls.
On that walk back, at one point, while ambling along the sidewalk, Alex stumbled into a hole in said sidewalk, which was apparently undergoing some sort of construction or something. Distracted by conversation, she hadn’t noticed the warning sign right beside it, and so her right foot dropped a foot or so into this pit.
It wasn’t much of a drop, but when its made entirely of concrete, it doesn’t take much to hurt a lot. None of us actually saw it happen, but I heard her cry out, so I immediately ran over, joined by the other guys. We helped her out, then found that one of her sandals had fallen off of her foot in that slight chasm, and it wasn’t readily seen. So Anthony, her husband, rooted around for it a bit, but still couldn’t find it.
We were about to leave, but I thought to myself, there’s no way a sandal could just totally disappear in a little ditch like that, so I laid flat on my stomach and reached in as far as I could, thinking that perhaps it had been propelled to the back of this ditch, beneath the still-intact portion of the concrete surface.
Sure enough, it was back there, so I gave it back to Alex, which kicked off a nice evening of her giving her husband crap for having not done the same. For the time being, though, we all just kept walking to our respective guesthouses, and split up at the appropriate junction.
Back at my guesthouse, I rinsed off the day’s activities, and got myself into some dry clothes, and laid on my bed for just a few minutes, left my camera bag, and got up and headed outside to meet again at the Aussie Bar.
I can’t remember what order we got there in, but soon enough we were all there, and we all ordered deliciously unhealthy food. For my part, I ordered their biggest hamburger, which had two patties, two slices of cheese, bacon, lettuce, and a fried egg on top (normally it’d have onions tomato and all that, but I don’t particularly care for those things on my burgers), and it was godly. All of this was washed down with a bit more booze, as Alex ranted probably a bit more than she can remember, and the rest of us recalled the highlights of the day.
Scrumptious meal finished, we headed to the . . . Sunset Bar? Maybe. It was a place to hang out a bit before going on over again to the Bucket Bar’s madness, and it was pretty chill, with a decent couple of games of pool going on as downed yet some more liquid foolishness, and Alex ranted to anyone who’d listen.
We were all having a decent enough time where we were, except for perhaps Anthony, but Alex really wanted to go dance. Anthony did not want to dance. Most of the rest of us didn’t really care one way or the other, but finally we went to dance, though Anthony went home by himself.
The dancing went well enough; it certainly helped to have a big group of friends for it. I felt bad for Anthony, but there was nothing to be done for it for the time being, so I just had fun instead. Familiar faces flashed by, and laughs abounded.
A couple of hours later, our night came to a satisfying close, and we all mozied on back to our respective temporary habitats. Some of us might meet again the next day, some of us might not. Evan, in particular, was scheduled to take a bus out to Vientiane in the morning, the Irish girls were going whichever way they were going, and Alex and Anthony had an afternoon departure lined up. In less than 12 hours, I’d be by myself yet again in Vang Vieng.
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