There was a knock on the door the following morning. "It didn't end well," Nathalie said in a voice both somber and quiet.
Towards the end of the previous day, Nat and her boyfriend David got broken up from the group. David cut his foot on a sharp rock while swimming down the Nam Song river, after losing his innertube. The alcohol muted the pain so he didn't realize the magnitude of the injury until the following morning, when the bed was covered in blood and there was a long vertical gaping hole going down his foot. Luckily the hospital was nearby, so he was quickly stitched up. But not before the doctors began cleaning his foot and pulled out a large tapeworm from inside the wound.
Others fared better.
Chris also lost his innertube and was swimming down the Nam Song river when he was hit directly in the forehead with a full waterbottle. He passed out immediately in the water, was rescued and received CPR. Mary was impatient waiting for her turn on the Olympic ski jump-like waterslide, so she went too soon and landed knee-first on Paul's eye, opening a considerable flap of skin. Ashley was so excited to take a leap from the high jump that she traversed the ladder too quickly and ended up slipping off and being rushed to the ER. Dozens of others are walking around town with pink eye after wrestling in a mud pit slightly downstream from the bathroom.
Welcome to Vang Vieng, Laos.
***
Of Vang Vieng, my friend Julia Levine said: "It's a river town that every college kid goes to get drunk and tube down rivers. Everyone I spoke with under 20 thought it was awesome, everyone over 20 thinks it's a herpes-infested vomit Sodom and Gomorrah."
She's not far off. The small town has very little personality. Or at least doesn't anymore. It's a series of small, run down guest houses, fair restaurants mostly selling Western food, street vendors selling sandwiches and pancakes 24 hours a day, souvenir shops, and pharmacies. Western tourists far outnumber the locals, who function purely on tourism. "Happy Pizza" and drugs are listed right on the menu, next to "dog barbeque". I'll have one of each. VV is not even really Laos, as it is mostly devoid of all the country's charms, culture, and beauty. It may as well be a US party town like Tempe, AZ. or Bloomington, IN., just transported to Southeast Asia. Bars and restaurants line the main town center, each playing The Simpsons, Family Guy, or Friends on near endless loop, day or night, with hungover patrons passed out on body pillows underneath the television's glow. If I hear the Rembrant's "I'll be There For You" one more time, I swear I may kill a small puppy. The theme song echoes throughout the streets, but rather than being upbeat and cheerful as was intended, when paired with the depressing town center, seems downright creepy.
It's really too bad Vang Vieng has decayed into something of a drunken wasteland, since the town is surrounded by striking natural beauty: Countless rows of charcoal-colored limestone mountains covered in mist, tall palm trees, sprawling reflective rice paddies, and dense forest.
Vang Vieng's main draw is its party tubing, and considered one of the premier places for the activity in the world. The activity combines the utter thrill of an adventure sport with the idyllic surroundings of a beautiful hike with the risk of death of Alaskan crab fishing. In Laos, the sport is beyond unregulated and is borderline anarchic. As one article put it, "if teenagers ruled the world, it might resemble Vang Vieng."
The locale for the tubing in the Nam Song river, a murky brown, tapeworm-infested body of water with a roaring current whose sides and floor are made out up sharp rocks. The river is bordered by lush scenery, but that's not why people come. The Nam Song is lined with ten bars on either side. One rents a tube from the co-op in the town center, where the profits are distributed between all the town's 25,000 residents, and hits the river around noon for a inntertube pub crawl. Each of the bars play thumping house music despite the early hour and administer free shots of paint-thinner like lao-lao (local rice whiskey) from super soakers.
Each of the bars offer some unique point of difference to draw in tourists. Some offer free joints with every cocktail. Others offer shots of whiskey infused with dead snakes, lizards, beetles, sea horses, large wasps, or scorpions -- the infusion of which is said to be liquid caffeine and Viagra.
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| Lao Lao (Laotian Whiskey) |
Others have mud wrestling or mud volleyball, but as I mentioned, one should list "conjunctivitis" before mud. Many of the bars have water games -- a huge, Nike symbol-shaped water slide resembling the ski jumps in the Winter Olympics, a massive water trampoline, water skiing, rope swings, zip lines, high dives 30ft up. Nearly all of these thrills are positioned right on the water's edge, adjacent to a shallow territory of large rocks. So if one does not jump fast or far enough, the landing may hurt a bit. And these are the "safe" activities, as the "dangerous" jumps and ziplines have been shut down. As is the case throughout the river, there are no lifeguard, no lifejackets, and no one is watching the jumps and slides. Plus, the house music is so loud that no one can hear your screams. As they all are identical, nearly everyone loses their tube by the late afternoon and are forced to swim down a treacherous river which would give a mermaid a run for her money. Viewing the river late in the day resembles the climax scene in Titanic.
Nearly all the bars have drinking games -- flip cup, beer pong, stomp the balloon, musical innertubes. At one such establishment, I was playing beer pong with some friends when the bar owner's twin eight year old daughters came up, pushed us out of the way and insisted on taking all the shots. I really should be against exposing such young kids to this world of disease, debauchery, and hedonism, but I must say they are virtuosos at the with the ping pong balls -- seasoned professionals who sinking nearly every ball in perfect swooshes.
Due to the melting pot of dangerous activites, drugs, and alcohol the mortality rate in Vang Vieng keeps climbing, rumored to be 1-3 death a month, and dozens more injuries. The month before I arrive, the Nam Song flooded, and was left with a raging fast current and a dangerously high tide. But that didn't stop the tourists and the bartenders said the deaths during the flood nearly reached double digits. Back in town, you often hear stories of travelers who never left the river at the exit point and were never heard from again. This article has an even worse account when the body of a newlywed washed up a few days later.
The Nam Song river is quite wide and in order to get from one bar from the next, you need to paddle excessively fast across the current unless you want to float straight past. In order to help drunken tourists make it to their establishment, each bar employs "tourist fisherman" who throw full waterbottles attached to ropes and then reel in the tubers.
Despite the near endless opportunities for death, disease, and/or debauchery, I had quite a terrific two days on the Nam Song river. The bars are packed with twentysomethings from all around the world, although predominantly England, Belgium, Germany, France, Holland, Ireland, Australia, Israel, and Canada. The odd exception is one fifty-year old man from Tokyo, who everyone has nicknamed "Spicy" since he's staying at my hostel of the same name, and begins tubing every morning with the phrase and a chili peppers spray painting on his naked chest. Supposedly Spicy's wife of many years was caught cheating and he had a nervous breakdown and booked a flight immediately to Laos. People at my hostel say he's been there for weeks, although I will say it must be a dramatic step down in luxury from Japan, what with all the mosquito nets, cold outdoor showers, and roofs that barely contain the rain. If there was ever a place designed to help you move on from your spouse's infidelity, I suppose Vang Vieng is it. And it really looks like Spicy is living it up -- he spends his days with thousands of people twice his age, partying, imbibing, playing drinking games, and passing out waterproof business cards with his Facebook contact information. Spicy has a distinct dance that he practices at every bar and all the patrons eagerly emulate -- clapping his hands to left side of his head, then in front of his chest, then on the right side. At one point, I seem him making out with a young traveler, at another he's licking the circumference of a different reveler's face. Ah, to be fifty, divorced, and on holiday.
Although everywhere wears bathing suits and little else, the main outfit of choice in Vang Vieng is spray paint. And not the kind one buys at CVS for Halloween costumes, but the industrial grade variety one could use to paint a car. Before I even set foot in the water, everyone from my Spicy Laos hostel is branded with a large red "Spicy" over his or her chest and a chili pepper over the abdominals. The spray paint is so potent that it burns my skin on the first second of impact, a sensation that lasts roughly three meetings. As such, it is really a surprise that so many of the innertubers are walking around with their entire faces sprayed, a'la Braveheart. Well, maybe it counteracts the conjunctivitus. Other sartorial choices for a day of tubing include brightly colorful headbands, ankle bands, and string bracelets that denote free shots. I start out modestly with my fashion choices: A couple bracelets plus my back is spraypainted with an "I Love Tubing" exclamation, while my arms and legs are designed with stars and stripes. But when showering the following evening, I notice someone has used bright yellow paint to brand my back with slang for pleasuring a woman. And as it's industrial grade spraypaint, it stays that way for another week.
The first night we tube well past dark despite numerous warnings and miss the main exit point. Thus, Teresa, Mael, and I are forced to walk through the jungle barefoot, over sharp thorns and rocks, to make our way back into town. Well at least we make it out, as we hear stories of people who miss the exit, having too much fun to leave the river, and are never seen or heard from again. By the time we make it back to town, we're tired, drunk, covered in paint and headbands, and a bit bruised and cut. But compared to our peers, we're no worse for wear.
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