Laos Day 5 – 7: Tubing, Takraw, Time

Day 5 – 8th December 2007

I woke up at 8am sharp by roosters cahooting their cries. Precisely why I no longer need an alarm clock if you have nature’s best alarm and riser (though annoying) right beneath the window of your room.

Today we decided our main activity of the day: tubing. It is necessary and probably compulsory for every traveller who stop by at Vang Vieng to participate in this overglorified and overcommercialised activity – and who are we to pass up on the chance?

After lunch at about 1pm, we scouted for the cheapest shop advertising tubing activities and settled for the one that sold the tubing services for USD$5 per person, which included a drybag and a lifejacket.

One thing that is certain about Vang Vieng is that almost every product or service sells for similar prices, as if a giant cartel has taken place. For example, just a couple of days ago we bought a six-pack of 1 litre bottles for 6000kip, and 2 days ago, prices for the same six-pack rose to 8000kip for all shops we visited. Certainly a curious oligopoly market (econs nerd wtf).

Our tubing adventure began with riding a tuk-tuk squeezed with 6 other foreigners (including 3 severely bimbo-ish girls) to go to the start-off point, about 5km away from the town near an organic farm.

Hooray for tubing.

The gigantic natural water theme park awaits.

Along the way floating on the river, you can stop at any of them bars and participate in jumps (which seemed to be a huge thing there) that seem to be one of the other main attractions of tubing. After much coercing from Siew did I actually try one flying fox gadget thingy, as heights and jumping into water are not my thing.

Let’s just say I managed to get fresh river water into my nose.

Siew Kiat flying down the flying fox.

A picture of me tubing.

What happened next was very incredulous – I managed to lose my camera for a second time without my realising it. As I got off the tube onto the 2nd or 3rd bar along the river, I heard a foreigner saying “Whose camera is this?”. I thought to myself “What a moron” until Siew said “Isn’t that your camera?”.

A foreigner apparently picked it up floating down the stream wtf. I don’t know why my camera decided to do a second disappearing act, it was also probably because the pockets of the pants I wore that day weren’t deep enough.

One of the many foreigners attempting the swing in Vang Vieng’s river.

Siew sepak takraw-ing.

At the 4th bar where we finally stopped for a long time, we bought our bottles of Beerlao and we joined the foreigners for sepak takraw for a bit, which seems to be a popular sport in Laos (and funny that back in Malaysia where it was nearly as popular, the both of us didn’t even bother to play it). It was quite a large congregation of foreigners at any particular spot, with almost every one of them with a Beerlao in hand getting high.

Another shot of sepak takraw in progress (yeah camera was in the waterproof bag again).

An even popular pastime in Laos – the French game called boules. Basically the objective of the game was to hit a small metal ball thrown randomly across the sandpit with larger metal balls.

I was probably the only few who had lifejackets on ‘cause many of them actually know how to swim.

When we decided it was enough, we left and continued on our merry tubing.

We encountered Jamie, a Briton, who scraped his arse particularly badly after hanging onto an engine-powered boat and dashed his butt hard into hidden rocks. He complained it loudly to Emerald, an LA resident who was fairly drunk. After mentioning something about karma, and her “boobs are hanging out” wtf as her bikini top was undone, she tried to adjust it – and her left boob popped out for a good 3 seconds ala Janet Jackson’s wardrobe malfunction before she covered it up again with a drunken giggle “Sorry!” wtf.

We shared a tuk-tuk with the both of them and another guy back to town which was supposed to be 5000kip each. Both Siew and I didn’t have enough money (spent what money we had on Beerlao) and Emerald told us she’d treat us, and we could buy them beer if we ever meet them again (we didn’t).

There you go, generosity from a drunk American girl.

Tubing would be even more relaxing if pop music was not played at every passing bar, that it quite disturbed the serenading peace. Nevertheless, the view was breathtaking – and tubing down the river is like a giant Sunway Lagoon except that it’s all au naturel.

Siew and I in a cybercafe after passing our laundry to the women in front of the shop to be done. Originally wanted to post up this picture to blog at that time as the computers there have memory card readers, but I couldn’t find a way to resize the picture plus the connection was a little slow.

Day 6 – 9th December 2007

I read in the Life of Pi that to survive at a shipwreck as a castaway, keeping track of time is one of the best ways to be mentally unencouraged, to give up on life, and believe in futility.

Though I definitely was not in a shipwreck, I realised that keeping track of time and date could sometimes be detrimental and maybe a little depressing. Thoughts of “Ah, almost a week has gone by” surfaced, and ironically, writing journals on my handphone actually fuelled this time-keeping agenda.

Of course, keeping track of time wasn’t an entirely bad thing as it helped us to keep us in line with our itinerary, and there was this sense of touching pure freedom out of reach – just a single touch with our fingertips to remind us that there no longer was routine monotony, at least, not now. This expendable uncountable amount of freedom was frightening: it was as if time was no longer relevant in our lives, that it didn’t matter what day or month it was, that as long as we continue to travel, freedom – in the sense of this acute unawareness of time – was ultimately achieved. A travelling nirvana.

In fact, after a stroll to this ‘island bar’ which we’ve never been to before, Siew and I self-declared today as a Rest Day. I also realised that it was also a Sunday, which meant money exchanging wasn’t possible as my kips were running low (banks are obviously closed on Sundays, plus there were unauthorised money exchangers around which gave very poor rates, such as 9000kip to a dollar, whereelse banks gave about 9450kip to a dollar).

The rickety wooden bridge to the island bar.

Me sitting on a frighteningly narrow and shabby bridge.

Me on another bridge with the mountains as the background.

The locals doing their laundry at the river, which is why water cannot be drunk straight out from the tap, what with no filters in place and with such practices still existing.

Another look of the laundry in progress.

I also had an awful piercing sore throat when I woke up that made me thought I was losing my voice. It go better as the morning passed, however.

Setting sun – snapped over the balcony of our guesthouse where we conversed with an Australian guy who was recovering from his few days worth of incredible diarrhoea.

Panorama picture – click to enlarge. Previous panorama pic I posted in my previous entry can now be enlarged as well.

We spent our evening/night at one of them TV-equipped restaurants watching countless of episodes of Friends (Season 3), which were hilarious – this coming from a guy who has never watched Friends before. And that was the time when our food took the longest amount of time to arrive (thus far in Laos), waiting for about an hour before our Western food (mine was a juicy steak) to arrive. Incredible.

In said restaurant with the televisions running on Friends.

After spending 2 hours plus watching Friends, we went back to our hotel to lepak and slept at about 10pm.

Day 7 – 10th December 2007

Today we left Vang Vieng for Luang Prabang reluctantly.

Had our final breakfast in the morning at Friendship, and we were all ready to leave. Wanted to purchase a Beerlao tee before I left (learned it was 20000kip), but a tuk-tuk to the ‘bus station’, which was really an old airstrip, had arrived.

Furthermore, prior to that, the landlady of our Viengvillay Guesthouse whom we booked our bus tickets with told us that our bus was full wtf. We asked repeatedly yesterday if we were certain to get a seat, and she said “Yes yes yes”. =.=”

In any case to compensate us, we were automatically upgraded to their so-called “mini bus” with no extra charge, which was really a van of sorts. Why a mini bus is much better than even a VIP bus is because it seats less people, smaller, and ergo more comfortable and faster. Siew and I took the only available front 2 seats, right next to the driver, no seat belts required.

A fellow passenger, a bald Israeli guy, shouted at the locals as we were supposed to depart at 9.30am (or 10am as the landlady told us). “I paid for 9.30 bus!” he bellowed at the poor staffs, but I thought it was absurd if you already knew unpunctuality is part of the local culture (well if you don’t, make an effort to know).

Very picturesque view of countryside Laos – if there’s such a thing as countryside in Laos since I believe the entire country IS countryside, perhaps save for its two major cities (major in Laotian terms can be played down), Vientiane and Luang Prabang.

I shall spare you further unnecessary descriptions of the range of green mountains we crossed up and down, and how blissfully beautiful it was because I’m sure I’ve done my part of describing the typical Laos setting before.

Now two interesting things occured: – We ran over a few chicks, I think. Literally chicks (as in baby chickens) who were.. what else, crossing the road. Why did the chickens cross the road? – During our first stop, our driver bought a large bag of sweets and we wondered if it was for himself. We later found out that he would throw the sweets out of his window as he passed by village kids who looked poor. Or kids in the middle of nowhere playing by the mountainside under the raging sun. His actions caused the kids to scramble for the sweets to fight for them.

Driver in the act of throwing sweets.

We reached the Luang Prabang Southern Bus Terminal at 3.30pm, hitched a tuk-tuk (while the Israeli lady fiercely bargained from the offered 10000kip/person to 3000kip/person for us), and we were dropped off somewhere. The Israeli lady again argued ferociously that he was to bring us to the ‘town centre’, and the tuk-tuk driver, after mumbling and cursing in his native language grudgingly brought us a little further in front of the National Museum.

We walked down in search of a guesthouse, and whom did we see again but Jazz and Li Teng coming out from a shop! What are the odds? It was fantastic to see familiar faces whom we can comfortably talk to, and then they showed us where guesthouses were available, as apparently it was the high season and most guesthouses were full.

We didn’t join the other two couples from the mini van (the British and the Israeli couples) – we went opposite ways in search of a cheap guesthouse. Apparently during high/peak season the prices were astronomically high, because when the two Singaporean girls arrived at Luang Prabang, the guesthouses were full and they had no choice but to stay in one that cost USD$16/night wtf.

After much surveying (and encountering a Singaporean boss of a real estate office or something), we found a decent one that went for USD$8/night and took it. The cheaper guesthouse where the girls were staying at were full.

We met up with the girls again at their guesthouse and had a nice long chat. Not to be xenophobic, but I found it much easier to converse with them because of language similarities, rather than speaking to, say, Irish for instance because their accents impede on how they pronounce words.

They were leaving for Kunming, China on a cringe-inducing 22-hour bus ride on that night itself. They also showed us where we could eat cheap food amidst the strands of expensive restaurants lined up on the streets, which was a vegetarian buffet stall for 5000kip/plate (~USD$0.50)!! You can take as much as you can fill your plate, to which they would fry for you on the spot, but only once – meaning no second helpings once you’re done with the food, etc.

That’s Siew on the left, Li Teng in the middle, and next to her is Jazz. Look at our plates filled to the brim.

Right, vegetarian – considering that I’m not big on eating vegetables, this could be considered my first time eating at a vegetarian eatery. Thankfully they had macaroni and some mee which didn’t make it a very trying meal.. the things I do to save costs.

Aforementioned vegetarian buffet stall.

The girls came over to our guesthouse for a chat until they had to leave at 8.30pm. We bade them goodbye for good, and promised to keep in touch via e-mails (which we did).

Spent the remaining of the night watching a few episodes of How I Met Your Mother (Season 1) on Siew’s iPod.