Apart from watching Friends in the restaurants, relaxing in the hammock and partying, more dynamic activities in Vang Vieng include caving, biking, tubing and kayaking!
It is amazing to see dozens and dozens of people just floating down the river on the inflated inner truck tires. They would be dropped of several kilometers up the river in the morning and would float down for hours till they reach Vang Vieng again. The floating can last even up to 5 hours and on the way down the river, you can find so called bars on the bamboo sticks with extremely loud music (hip-hop, techno…), gallons of Lao Beer (which is, btw extremely good) and high bamboo platforms from which youngsters in search for more adrenalin can jump into the river (which is not really safe during the dry season…).
Anyways, Renata (the girl I met in North Thailand I travel with since then) and I decided to enjoy the river by kayaking which was extremely nice! The only thing was that we ended up with the kayak with the small hole in the bottom so I ended up, between rowing, taking out the water (as I was on the back) with small plastic bottle (doing actually what I saw almost all Laotian people are doing when being in the boat). Even this was not enough, so when the water would be so high that the edge of the kayak was only 2-3 cm above the water and I was sitting in the water up to waist, we would need to stop on the shore, go out and empty the kayak (by turning it upside down) and then coming back to rowing.
One local guy who was guiding some group for kayaking, while passing next to us, started to laugh like crazy shouting to us “Titanic kayak! Titanic kayak!” So, to be in line with the situation, we started to sing the most annoying song ever “….you’re here, there’s nothing I fear…..my heart will go ooooonnn….”
Getting closer to Vang Vieng we saw allot of poor tubers that were looking really tired and bored after so many hours floating… One guy even asked us “Which way to Europe?” as it felt like he is floating forever… So, since we are really nice people, Renata and myself offered to one lady, who looked like she will cry of boredom, to take our rope and we will help her to get faster to Vang Vieng. Soon, we felt like public bus, as more and more people just connected themselves to the tube of another and we were looking so funny – imagine small kayak with two people trying to row and pull 5-6 tubers connected…But, we did a good deed for that day, helping all those poor people to come quicker to the shore before dieing of boredom!!!
