See What Tim Is Doing: Vang Veing – Successfully shaving 10 years of people lives (August 22-25)

We left Luang Prabang excited for the 6 hour mini bus ride to Vang Veing, know for its tubing antics that involves getting an inner tube from car or truck wheel, jumping in a river that has a strong current, floating down the river and stopping off at bars along the way to drink, dance and do rope swings and crazy slides, sounds safe? We didn’t even make it there before we were risking our lives.

A few hours from Luang Prabang, and we hit a stop in the road with a long line of traffic and we were told there had been a landslide, which for this time of year was normal, and we had passed several that had been cleared, so we weren’t too worried, until Jonny and I decided to go to see the extent of the slide. A 20 minute walk along the line of stationary traffic and we faced the landlside, which literally looked like half of the mountain was missing. An area about 25meters high and about 100meters long had slid from the rain and had taken out a large section of the road, along with some electricity poles and any hope of getting across in our van.

We waited around for several hours waiting to hear what was going on, and we heard mixed reports; three hours, by 5pm and then that the slide had actually happened several days ago, and days later we had clarification that the slide had actually happened several days before we got there.

Frustrated, extremely hot and ready to go insane, we had to do something, and along with the other 100 backpackers in the same situation, we decided to get our bags from our van, and follow in the footsteps of some people we saw scaling up the side of the slide and walking along the top to get to the other side.

Loaded with close to 30kgs of luggage, and some rain drops starting to fall, it was looking grim, but we had no choice, so we gathered a crew and scaled the muddy, slippery path up, sweating like mad, which made our feet even slipperier and made it to the top without anyone falling or getting lost along the way, then the rest was easier, although still felt slightly unsafe, walking across the top of a land slide and seeing the tractors below working to clear it all and seeing how big it really was, but we made it! Next problem was now finding someway to get to Vang Veing from the middle of nowhere!

Groups of backpackers were huddled all over the road trying to figure out what to do next, and we managed to find someone who was willing to take us there, for a price of course, which we managed to bargain down a bit to approximately £5 for a 2 hours ride, the catch, it was in the back of a little tipper style truck. So 14 of us piled our bags and bodies into the back of the truck, and were on our way.

Sounds pretty average, but in the end was a lot of fun. Jonny had a bottle of whisky so that got passed around the back of the truck, everyone was in high spirits and having a laugh and getting to know each other. Then we made a stop along the way and loaded up with some Beerlaos and snacks and were back on the road, up and down winding mountain roads and witnessing some of the most amazing scenery I have ever seen in my life! It was so mountainous, green, and just beautiful, and taking it in from the back of the truck was even better as there was nothing to disturb the view.

A couple of bumpy hours later and we finally made it to Vang Veing, found a guesthouse, showered and washed the caked on mud off our bodies and went for a bite. Within two steps of the front of our guesthouse we were met by a girl with a tray of shots, handing them out for free, so we indulged and went in, got some dinner and beers and met some more randoms and chilled for a few hours. The girls left and Jonny and I decided to go for a wander and see what else was going on, and ended up in one of the clubs for a few hours partying and dancing the night away.

First day tubing and we were pumped! All ready with our waterproof bags and money for the day, we hired our tubes and got a ride to the river, ready for a day or carnage. First bar kicked off with some casual beers, then quickly moved to beer pong and a bucket. Then next bar more buckets and dancing and the first of the rope swings. Swimming from the balcony of the bar into the water, brilliant fun. Next bar, the first slide which was fun but a little tame, still more buckets again of course and at this point everyone is well and truly merry! And I forgot to mention the way you get to these bars is you sit in your tube, float down the river and then guys in the bars throw bottles with ropes on them to you, you catch them and they pull you in to the bar.

The highlight of the day came from one of the later bars, that has a slide, funny enough called ‘The Death Slide’ which is a tiled slide, about 25meters long and at the end it shoot up like a ski jump, and is amazing fun! So we brought a bucket, got our stamp to let us use the slide, drank the bucket and climbed the stairs to the top, and from the top it looked even bigger. Girls and guys were all sliding down it, so we jumped on and had a go and it was soooo sweet! We were controlled at the start just sliding down like normal, but after gaining some more courage, head first sliding was happening, and then final slide for the day I decided to try a flip off the slide and luckily for me it worked out just as planned and got cheers and claps from all the spectators on the dock watching. So I left on a high note before I ended up hurting myself.

The final bar for the day, had another rope swing and probably the most dangerous thing I had seen that day, a big blow up rectangle that one person sat on the end and other people jumped on the other end and launched the person into the air and into the water. One of the girls we met got on the end and three of us decided to launch here, so we jumped and launched her but all smashed ourselves, knees jolted, hitting ribs and jaws, wasn’t really worth it, so that was the last of that activity. So we moved onto the rope swing and that soon claimed another one of us as a victim. Em swung off the swing all fine but when getting out of the water stepped on a tree stump it pierced her foot causing a mean wound on her foot and toe. So we decided we’d call it a day for the tubing and go home, wash up and get ready for partying that night. The night got pretty messy and to sum it up, we ate, drank, danced and woke up pretty dusty the next day, but decided to back it up and go tubing again.

A little dusty to start, but as soon as you get off the raft to the first bar, your head is tipped back and some shots are thrown straight down your throat, which I think actually sorted me out for the start of day two. Tubing also was much the same; drinking, dancing, rope swings and slides into the river, floating around getting hammered. I randomly ran into Becky and Ky who I met in Xi’an and hung out and partied with them a fair bit, which was good fun! It was another highly enjoyable day, but the main difference was the tube home.

We decided to tube the whole way back to town that many people do, and was told it was easy and took about 40 minutes. As we all enjoyed floating in our tubes, we decided this sounds like a delightful thing to do, so we had about 6 of us, floating down the river (it was also dark by now) and we were laughing having a merry old time until we ran into some people who were not as chilled as us. They were hammered drunk, sharing a tube and freaking about where we were going. Luckily they didn’t rub off on us too much, and when we adopted a couple of other people tubing back to town, we had a nice posse floating back to town signing some tunes, not worrying about what creatures could be below the murky waters or in the dark river banks, and in the end we ended up exactly where we wanted, although at times we thought the drunk Australian’s that were panicking were going to die, but the crew made it to town safe and sound.

Our last night was nothing massive but was a fun night. We had dinner in a chilled little roadside kitchen where the menu was very limited but the food was amazing! Then moved onto a shisha bar from some shisha, a few buckets and a game of 8’s that really got everyone sauced right back up. We then moved onto another bar just to sit back and chill, ordered a few more drinks and chatted with Ky and Becky who popped by and then as we were leaving, we saw a separate hand written menu that sold all kind of interesting treats like happy garlic bread, opium pancakes, bags of mushrooms and opium and then just in case you have a chronic smoking habit, they also sold 1kg bags of weed. We thought against it and headed back home for a semi decent nights sleep. As the next 30+ hours was going to be spent on buses to Cambodia…not fun! And with the track record with buses in Laos it doesn’t look good!