My day of tubing...

A few months ago Vang Vieng was like the spring break spot of Laos. It's streets line with bars and restaurants were the perfect places to come and enjoy time with your friends. Apparently it was a rowdy, wild, free for all and too many idiots got too messed up and died doing stupid things. I could definitely see how this could happen there. Now Vang Vieng is just a place to chill out. All the restaurants play DVDs of either Friends, Family Guy or South Park. You can just post up in a place and lounge on their pillows and watch TV all day.

The thing to do in VV is to rent a tube and go tubing down the river. It now has the reputation of being not as fun as a few months ago, but I disagree. Conor and I met up with Hatty and Reebs for our day of tubing. We rented tubes then a Tuk Tuk takes you down the street to the start. The water was very low because we are in the dry season, but we hopped on our tubes and began our slow decent down the river.

I'm not sure how many bars there were before. But now there are three places to stop on the river. The first was the most fun. The bartender Ni was so cute and nice, providing us with alot of entertainment. There was basketball, bocce ball and a ping pong table. We hung out and had a few drinks with whoever came up too. It was awesome. We continued on the river stopping again for a second at another bar. The third bar was okay, kind of a final gathering of people. Then we floated on for a bit towards the end. After 2 hours of floating it was getting dark and I was getting cranky so we bailed on the river and took a Tuk Tuk back. The day was so fun and I can't imagine enjoying myself if it was just a crazy wild party the whole time.

Another place to see in Vang Vieng is the lagoon. We heard it was a beautiful bike ride away so another day we rented bikes. It was not a fun ride. We took mountain bikes because the streets are so bumpy. It was hot, it hurt and I didn't enjoy myself at all. An hour of me complaining later (sorry Conor) we made it. The lagoon was small, but nice for a cold swim after a hot bike ride. We hung out for a bit and then headed back. If you ever go here- take my advice and just take a Tuk Tuk to the lagoon.

One of our best finds in Vang Vieng was a restaurant/ movie theater. They had a big screen and you just pick a movie (from about 100), watch and eat dinner. Obviously this is where we had dinner almost every night. We watched Ace Ventura, Dumb and Dumber and School of Rock.

Vang Vieng was a great place to relax for a few days. We had some TV binges with some river excitement, but we were ready to move on to Vientiane, Laos.

* sorry no pictures of tubing, didn't bring my iPhone that day *