Tubing down the Mekong with a beerlaos in Vang Vienne

So the idea is that you start at the Organic Mulberry Farm with a mojito from the bar by the river. Then you grab a beer (Beerlaos being one of the finest beers in Asia) and stick your bum in the tube and then gently drift off to the next riverside bar. On the way to the river with our tubes, we met Nancy, Susan, Olly, Paul and Laura. They became tubing buddies in what was to become the most fun so far on this journey. They say what makes the experience is the people you’re with.. well, then I blame them for us over shooting our schedule by 4 days.

On our way to the river to get some tubing action in

Nancy and me enjoying our mojitos before we embarked on our tubing mission to get very pissed and swing off of silly ropes wherever possible

“whats the deal with the silly cow behind us canoeing? Someone should tell her that tubing is much more fun’’ Neil chortled. There was this weird kind of ‘ús and them’’ division between the people on tubes and the others in canoes (with life jackets on, alan partridge style)

When I get back to the UK, I’m chucking out the sofa and getting a tube. They’re stupidly comfortable, as you can see.

First stop on the river bar crawl is a bamboo constructed bar with my favourite rope swing. At least it was until the next day (yes, we went back and did it all over again– 3 times in fact). The following day I did the same swing, except this time I did the splits on my landing pulling all the ligaments on my inner thigh. Neil was a hero and got me a large medicinal whiskey and went back to town to get painkillers. I limped back onto my tube and floated on, with the gals to the next bar and drank a big bucket to kill the pain!

The first bar on the river. People swinging in the background.

Neil has a go..

So graceful

But I was better…

Then head to the next bar, a short float along on our tubes

This is just after my painful acrobatics on the swing at the last bar. Olly was a sweetie and got me an ice bag, Neil had already thrown a strong local whiskey down my throat (hence the silly grin) and Nancy decided this was a good time to record the moment. Cheers, Nance.

Nancy, Laura and me on the second (or was it third?) day of tubing in a row. I’m grinning like a prat coz I’’m actually off my face on local painkillers and whiskey having just buggered up my leg.

A bucket break (on the first day) at the next bar along the river

Happy Days – lots of giggles in the sunshine

Major munchies after a hard day’s tubing – Olly is not actually this scary, although he does look as though he wants to glass whoevers taking the photo.

Nancy trying to pretend she’s not freezing her bits off at 4.30pm as the sun starts to go down

I’d even acquired  a special ‘tubing’ hat by day 4.

  The final tubing frontier – we made it to the end at long last

We had tried for 3 days to complete the journey to the end of the river, but had somehow always managed to get stuck at this one bar drinking til it was suddenly sunset and we were forced to get a tuk tuk home. I couldnt bear not actually finishing the whole thing, so decided that even if I went on my own, I would make it. Luckily, the girls and Neil joined me and we finally completed the whole tubing experience (after 4  attempted days, not bad) 

 

Everyone thought it would be very amusing to throw their tubes over the short ass. Short ass felt very silly and even more short than usual.

Neil then tried to encourage the girls to push me over. Git.

On our last day, we thought a ‘Magic Happy’’ shake would help us along our merry way down the Mekong. That night I laughed so hard I cried, and my face ached

Messy pups all round.

Some people have even been known to lose their havainas (they’re posh flip-flops if you’re wondering, Dad)

The next day we headed off for some cave exploring, feeling very Famous Five

This guy had the right idea – a hammock in a tuk tuk!

Sleeping Budha in a cave. We kinda feel a bit bad now as this is quite disrespectful now we look back at it. We didnt mean any bad will and we’re over it now.

We went a bit further out to see a local village. These are the local kids running through the village to say hello. The village has a 300 year old trible called the Mong tribe, they’re so friendly – especially the little uns

 

We stopped our trek for some lunch. The local guide rustled up a BBQ and we had the most delicious chicken kebabs – never knew BBQ’d pineapple and chicken worked so well!

 

View as we trekked through the Laos countryside

After a bit of a hike, we came to a cave which had a lagoon outside, the idea being that you had to hire a tube from the lady at the the entrance and then tube into the pitch black cave, holding the rope. Unfortunatly, I’d forgotten my bikini, darn…. so sat this one out.This is Neil with the headlamp on his head. Good look.

Off home, after a hard day at the office

This is our bungalow by the river

 

 

Check out the stairs we had to get down (and up). Interesting after a few Beerlaos

 This is the view from the bungalow balcony

Next stop is leaving Vang Vienne and heading to Lao’s capital, Vientenne… by kayaking most of the way down. Neil is already insisting he has his own kayak, can’t think why…

Laos – Kayaking to Vientenne

So, unfortunately for Neil, we ended up sharing a kayak. It was fairly sedantry until we got to the grade 2 rapids whereby we torpedoed down with Neil screaming “paddle faster, paddle faster”, not realising that the guide had fitted my helmet onto my head the wrong way round, and I couldnt see a thing as it was covering my eyes and down by my chin. Somehow or another we managed to remain one of the few kayaks that did not actually capsize. I still have no idea how we pulled that one off.

 

Am I still in Thailand? Yes Siam. Chiang Mai Hot Springs, to be exact.

Hot Springs in Chiang Mai, Thailand (they really stink). Very surreal as we were the only falang there, just hoards of local thai school kids, looking very bored (proving that school trips are tedious wherever in the world you live). They bought fresh eggs from the entrance of the springs, and then would put them in a little bamboo basket and boil them in the hot spring. Not sure how smelly a sulphur bolied egg would be, so I opted for the local thai papaya salad instead for my lunch (my regular fave)

Stinky hot sulphur spring for boiling your eggs in (as you do)

One proud boiled egg-owning school kid

This lady makes a mean papaya salad, and knows it.

We were a bit perturbed by this sign (particularly Neil, for obvious reasons)

Then looked inside the bathing rooms and worked it all out.

Neil relaxed and gave the hot springs swimming pool a try..

A parasol making village – parasoltastic!!

 

 

The chilled out Loi Kratong (“Loi” means “to float”. “Krathong” is a raft about a handspan in diameter traditionally made from a section of banana tree trunk) festival is a lovely ‘”festival of light” where the sins of the past year are washed down the river by floating small ‘”kratongs” – banana leaf bouquets with lighted candles and incense, down the river, or by launching ‘”khoms” (glowing paper balloons) into the night sky. We bought as many as we could thinking that this would still not be enough to deal with what we got up to last year, including about ten bags of catfish that are caught from the river and then re-released as you make a wish. It is held on the full moon of the 12th month in the traditional Thai lunar calendar, in the western calendar this usually falls into November. A beautiful handmade kratong costs a whole 20 baht – about 25 pence.

Releasing the catfish.. we bought ten bags of the little blighters, thinking we’d saved all of them from the fate of dying on the sellers table. Felt like we’d done a good and great thing (and the seller couldn’t believe his luck) as we cleared his table.. and then he produced a whole dustbin full of the poor things swimming about. We stopped short of buying the dustbin.

Lighting our ‘khom’, a very huge paper lantern that when lit, takes flight into the night sky. Neil almost burnt my hair, and I came close to losing my eyebrows.. am a bad height for khoms I found out.

 

A ridiculously large khom – it took about 10 minutes to catch flight. All the local boys try and out do each others khoms, seeing who can light the biggest

 

The sight of hundreds of these dotted about the sky and waterways, plus all of the hundreds of fireworks adds even more magic to this charming and peaceful celebration. I spent most of the evening mesmerised like a child by everything.

A ‘’tree’’ made out of glowing paper lanterns

Next day we head off to the Thai-Laos border for a 6 hour coach journey… Laos here we come!

This is the interior of our VIP Bus – I had to let you see how special it is. We even got a a permanently looped Thai karaoke video which played (very very loudly) throughout the 6 hour journey. This video was more shocking than anything I saw throughout the journey.

Luckily we had ipods (thanks again for my ipod shuffle, Darryl and Gill!!)

Next stop, Laos

 

Laos

We arrived into Laos in the evening after taking a 5 hour coach trip from Chiang Mai in the north of Thailand.  We came through a small town called Huay Xai.  This is a sleepy town that serves as the main entry point into Laos from north Thailand.  For such an important transport location this place is really basic.  The accomodation was very cheap and food was great but there was nothing happening after 8pm. 

The morning after a good nights sleep after being awoken by roosters at dawn we headed to the ‘speedboat’ port. There are two choices for travellers heading into mainland Laos. You can take the long slowboat which takes 2–3 days to reach Luang Prabang or you can opt for the ‘speedboat’ which takes 6 hours. The longboat whilst enjoyable to see the Mekong river for days you run the risk of dying of boredom.  The speedboat you simply run the risk of dying!   So with that decision made we booked ourselves on the speedboat!

The speedboats are more surfboard than boat.  The only difference being that there’s a huge unbalanced car engine strapped on the back.  (that and they do 60mph)

We had a long arguement with the boat captains as they are only supposed to carry 6 passengers and their luggage.  They tried to fit six passengers and luggage and the drivers wives who according to the Laos drivers didn’t count as passengers!  Whatever they were they certainly took up valuable space and with these boats having a notoriously dangerous reputation we all stuck to our guns and argued for 40mins or so until the captains relented and laid on another boat.

After heading off late I think we had to catch up time to ensure we got to Luang Prabang before dark.  The boats really shifted and were genuinely frightning for a while! With the stories of certain death rattling through our heads we all silently prayed as we headed off.

Our view for 6 hours

We were REALLY lucky to blag the front two ‘seats’ as we were able to stretch our legs in front of us.  Whilst exhilerating after about 10 minutes you really started to notice there was no space on these boats at all!

After 3 hours we stopped for lunch and the captains sneakily shifted the bag around to squeeze 7 people on our boat and 8 on another. 

After a while we realised this was a blessing in disguise as our new passenger got off 30 mins later allowing us to remove the partition and spead out a bit.  The two canadian guys at the back had drawn the short straw and were crushed for 6 hours.  They also forgot to put on any warm clothes so were borderline hyperthermic when we arrived.

Service station – Laos style, serving everything from Mentos to Buffalo to Opium.

Budhist Monks heading the same way as us. (praying mostly)

Marrianne asleep at 60ypmph with her head inches from the surf.  This was particularly amusing as when we hit a wave she would get woken up with a a faceful of Mekong river. The canadians lads behind were close to hypothermia at this point.

“Safety’ equiptment Laos style.  It was completely useless.  The only reason I was wearing a helmet was to help keep my head warm.