If there are no photos, did it actually happen?

What's this? Another blog so soon? Yes, that's exactly what it is. I need to write about tubing in Vang Vieng before the euphoria subsides and the memory of the day fades away. We took no camera, so besides the scrapes and bruises and the mud still in our ears and belly buttons, there are no mementos to remember the day by. Best write about it while it's still fresh.

We knew the day would be either terrific or terrifying when we arrived in Vang Vieng and we were sitting in one of the town's many, many covered but open-air restaurants (all of which play Friends DVDs on repeat) and our slow boat friends who had beat us to Vang Vieng would walk past and tell us of near-death experiences, lost possessions, and sore muscles. One person said it was one of the best days of his life, and I was a little skeptical.

But wow. Seriously, one of the funnest days ever. You rent a tube and get driven to a launch spot, where you drop your tube in the Mekong. You're not on the river for very long though, cause within probably 100 ft. you come to the first bar. At each bar, you're helped by Lao people in the water or thrown a rope with a waterbottle on the end of it. Each bar has either a zipline, a trapeze, or a slide that results in you dropping or falling into the river, and the first trapeze is supposed to be the scariest. I decided that I needed to try them all, and the first one (with only one mojito and half a beer in me to dull my nerves) was terrifying. I can't even really guess how high the first one was, but it was high. It was so difficult to make myself jump off the platform, because everyone at the bar (maybe 200 people) is watching each person go and either cheering for a good go or laughing at the belly-flops and mishaps. I did not want to be a mishap. I had finally prepared myself and had the trapeze solidly in my hands, but there were several tubes leaving the bar at that point and I had to wait for ages until the passed. I was shaking by the time I had to go and was afraid that I lacked the upper-body strength to hold on long enough to swing all the way out, swing back, and then swing back out and drop. Thankfully, my turn was successful and I instantly wanted to do it again. Some of the others weren't as exhilarating, but I did them all.

The atmosphere was so fun, and we drank and laughed and floated and met new people and people we'd met earlier in our travels. So much fun. The fourth bar was the mud bar, which was the most fun. It was pouring rain and there was a big mud volleyball pit with waist-deep water and mud where we played (yup, ballers, I played volleyball) and tackled each other and splashed around. I kept jumping out of there and going off the zipline at that bar to clean off, but by that point I was getting pretty inebriated and the current was pretty strong. Thankfully, I had a little Lao helped who kept throwing me a ring and pulling me in and every time he gave me the "I love you" signal and told me he loved me. He was so cute. And he saved my life probably three times that day, so I guess I love him too.

So if you're thinking that perhaps people tubing down rivers drunk and swinging off very high apparatuses into a fast-moving river (while drunk) is recipe for disaster, and I had pretty much come to that conclusion myself by the sixth bar, at which I fell off the trapeze prematurely cause I could no longer hold on. Thankfully, I paced myself a lot better than some of the other people, some of whom passed out in their tubes, etc. Kaje ended up puking on my leg, but I was so muddy and wet by that point that I really didn't care. Then, suddenly it got really really dark very suddenly and thinks got a little scary. We all grabbed our tubes and were ready to head out but they wouldn't let us cross this bridge, so they had free boats (kind of just a wooden raft) that we were supposed to use to cross. Upon the arrival of the first boat, about ten of us crowded onto it and the boat sank and Kaje and this British guy, Edward, started floating away into the dark. I was freaking a bit and yelling her name, but then I got pinned under the boat a bit against the rocks and by the time I got unpinned, I couldn't see Kaje any more. So I got across the river and was screaming after Kaje and she eventually casually came strolling up, all smiles, saying that Edward saved her life. We were both a bit too drunk to fully grasp the gravity of the sitaution, and we headed home for maybe the most hilarious shower I've ever had, Kaje and I spraying each other with the nozzle and trying to get the mud off of us. We didn't have a late night, cause nine hours of drinking was enough for us, and I really wanted to do it all again (with a camera) the next day. The next morning, though, we woke up hungover and mangled and it was pouring rain, and we weren't entirely sure that we could match or top our first Vang Vieng tubing experience, so we headed out.

I just wish we had taken a camera!!! It's really best that we didn't, because if we had, we doubtless would have lost it. In the course of our tubing day, we lost: both our shirts, both our pairs of flip flops, a few thousand kip, Kaje's tube, a couple layers of skin, a little bit of dignity, and nearly Kaje.

Perhaps it's for the best that there are no pictures...