Mini Cancun in Laos

We arrived in Vang Vieng on the night of February 5th. As usual, the bus station was on the outskirts of town where tuktuk drivers waited to scam you for a ride into town. Luckily, one of the guys on our bus had traveled there before and said it was only a 15-20 minute walk into town. So a bunch of us boycotted the tuktuks and made the walk. Once we were in town Teala and I bartered a room for 60,000 kip, equivalent to $7.50. That night Teala and I ran into some of our friends from the slow boat and went to one of the many bars and split a bucket. For those of you who don't know what a bucket is, its basically a childs toy sand bucket they would use at the beach filled with cheap Lao whisky and coke.
Vang Vieng is basically a mini Cancun. Its filled with a bunch of backpackers and it's a party all day and night. The next day we went tubing down the Nam Xong River. Tubing is basically the only Thing to do in Vang Vieng and let me tell you it is one wild time. For a good kilometer there are bars on everyside of the river cranking music. To begin you must cross a bridge to the starting point, which of course is a bar. As soon as you walk in they make you take whisky shots!
We met another couple, Joe and Rosie, from England. All four of us decided to venture down river a little bit. Each bar along the way tries to lure you in by tossing plastic bottles attached to ropes to pull you up to their bar. The next bar was the most fun. They had two for one buckets and more free whisky shots! Most bars have some kind of water entertainment. There were trapeze swings that drop you from 30 feet up, ziplines, some scary home made water slides as well as some "kind of" legit ones. The first trapeze swing scared the shit out of me. The little Asian dude that worked there made it look easy pulling off one handed backflips. So after Teala went off, I couldn't be shown up by her, so I sucked a few more whisky shots for some encouragement. To my surprise it was not nearly as bad as I thought and we ended up doing it a bunch of times before moving onto the next bar...the homemade water slide.
This thing looked incredibly sketchy. It was a bunch of wooden planks slapped together with a plastic tarp over the top. From the deck it looked like it was going to launch you onto the sand bar over the river. It turned out to be fine except that it launches you into a pretty fast moving current and you float down stream a little bit. After a shared bucket we decided to move onto the next bar.
Another trapeze swing. Before we went off the swing, Teala asked me what these stencils were used for? After seeing the cans of spray paint, no answer was needed. Rosie, the English girl, actually asked Teala to spray paint a giant star on her forehead (she must of had one too many buckets and free shots). Without hesitation Teala was all over that. After a few random stars, hearts and smiley faces we hit the swing a couple times, hopped on our tubes to the next bar.
The next slide looked a bit more trustworthy than the first one. At least this one was constructed of concrete and had tiles on the surface of the slide instead of plastic. The slide was huge. It was about 50 feet high and the end was still 20 feet above the water. You definetly caught some sick air off of it! And so of course we did it! With time running low we decided it was time to float on down to the finish otherwise they would charged us a late penalty. Along the banks were tuktuk drivers offering to pick you up and take you back. We believed we had time to make it so we began rowing a bit as we floated on. Soon we came across more tuktuks and they told us we still had two kilometers left.... I looked at my watch...30 minutes left. Teala said we should go for it because if we didn't make it, at least we had tried. Once we decided to go for it we kicked and paddled our asses off. I looked at my watch....9 minutes left.... We came around a corner and could see the city!! Dragging Teala behind me we were closing in on the finish. When we reached the end, a guy tells me we have to return the tubes back to the warehouse we got them from! I grabbed Tealas tube, along with mine and ran down the road! When I go out there I was relieved I had made it, even with 45 seconds to spare. A few seconds later a tuktuk shows up carrying who? Our English friends, Joe and Rosie. They looked shocked and asked how in the hell did we beat them back?
Later that night Teala and I went out for dinner, which I enjoyed two meals because Teala was a little hung over from having too much fun earlier in the day. After that we went out to meet our new friends for a drink but never found them, so Teala and I just hung out in some hammocks in one of the bungalows at the bar. I thought it was a great way to enjoy our first anniversary together!