Tubing and Beer Laos

Sunset on Nam Song
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So we arrived to Vang Vieng a couple days ago and celebrated our Day 100 here.  Driving into this little town, we discovered quickly that it caters to the backpackers life.  It is one street filled with guesthouses, internet cafes and restaurants.  With its very chilled out and relaxed atmosphere we quickly adapted to chill mode.  Many of the restaurants play re-runs of Friends, Simpsons and Family guy, so you can lie down and enjoy dinner and relax after a hard day of what this place is known for......TUBING!!!!!  The only actual thing here to do is to tube down the Nam Song River which they say takes 2 hours to do if you don't stop at all the pit stops.  These aren't any ordinary pit stops.  Along the river banks starting at the launch point about 2 km north of the town, bars line up and as you tube by if you want to stop they throw out a stick to wheel you into their bar.  The greatest thing is that they sell only Beer Lao, which we absoltely love.  At the bars they have zip lines and swings, which of course we go on, and many trying to do the best dismount than the person in front of them.  We have done 2 days on the river, our first we didn't make it to the end.  We ended up at the umbrella bar (which we call it) where we hung out with our new tubing buddies from Canada and the States.  There we had fun on the swing and of course enjoyed the ice cold beer loa.  The first day we stopped at pretty much every bar along the way, and not much tubing happened.  We didn't realize how long the river went and when we saw that the sun was setting we got out as it was getting dark and there was a tuk-tuk there to drive us back into town.  All in all a great day, but we were determined to finish the river.  We finsihed the day off with Lao massages which are better than Thai massages, but don't compare to the Vietnam massages we had.

On our Balcony
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So we got out to the river wanting to finish it.  Erin and I actually found the end point just by chance when we went to take pictures of the sunset behind the mountains.  So knowing where the endpoint was we had a goal set to get there.  We set out not wanting to stop at every bar along the way as that is what put us behind schedule the day before.  We grabbed out river pops and coasted down the river, stopping at the umbrella bar to soak up some sun and to go off the swing.  We then carried on, and friends that we traveled with in Vietnam who were here a couple weeks before (who ranted and raved about the tubing), stopped at a family bar which they loved.  We wanted to find this family bar and see them.  Luckily we got to this other bar just down the river and asked them if they knew the Canadians that were here and who gave them a picture.  They knew exactly who we were talking about and even knew that it was James.  James Is our friend who has a more than average sized head, and he fell in love with thier little boy because he had a big head as well.  He took a picture of him and this family and developed it and gave it to them.  When we were there today we asked if they had the picture, but it was at home, so Erin and I got a picture with them.  After that, Erin and I coasted down the river with our tubes and beer loa in hand.  Life doesn't get much better than this.  Letting the river do the work and all you have to worry about is not to tip over.  When you look up all you see are the mountains and the sunshine.  Yes, I know we lead a very hard life right now.  We made it to the end point and were very happy that we finsihed the river, as a lot of people get side tracked with all the swings and bars.  It was our last day on the river so it was something we had to do.  We got way too much sun, but our tans our defintely coming back.  2 days on the river definetly helped, but now I have to get rid of this awfuly sunglass tan that I have now.

The strip in Vang Vieng (the only strip!)
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Vang Vieng has been great, but we are taking off to Luang Prubang in the morning for a couple days to see the waterfalls and night markets.  Until next time.................