Vang viang is tubing and tubing is vang viang. They're like smors and a camp fire. Neither one really stands out without the other.
You begin by hiring an inner tube for $4 and signing away all rights to your life while signing on for a million clauses meaning you'll pay if you break / lose / alter / eat or otherwise touch your inner tube / life jacket / friends etc in any way that might make them less fun for the next person.
You then jump in a 'tuk tuk' truck and get driven up the river a couple of k's to the drop off point. They drive off and you're left wondering what the hell you do next. Nothing much to it though. You simply sit in your tube, back slowly into the river and start floating aimlessly down half hoping that at some stage there'll be something going on and that you are indeed in the right tributary.
After maybe a hundred metres you suddenly find yourself being attacked by small brown animals flying through the sky over top. On closer inspection these reveal themselves to be little Thai people on swings inviting you to join them.
Up you climb and after a quick shot of Lau Lau Whiskey down ya throat (this stuff can make a car engine run), you're clamouring to have your turn on the swing.
All down the river are about 10 bars set up with swings and flying foxes. These are suspended out over the river to varying heights with the highest being maybe 10m all up. You grab hold, hope like hell the dodgy bamboo handle holds and swing out to perform dazzlng feats of aerial artistry when you let go.
If you let go. I watched some people hold on till the swing was pretty much stationary and then let go. On the other hand I also saw an impressive back flip and a couple of even more impressive back flops (cheers Harry!). I managed a couple of trapeze like leg swings but failed miserably with all my attempts at landing a flip.
At each bar, to build courage and increase comradship, you also down a couple of beers. So by the end of it you're happily tipsy and ready to try all sorts of double team, dumb idea, swinging manouvres.
Tubing usually gets busy around 2pm, you start around 1pm and you finish up anywhere between 5-9pm depending on who you meet up with and their desire to get to the bars.
So it pretty much consists of floating down a river for a couple of hours in the sun, getting drunk with a lot of awesome people at bars along the way, doing some swings to prove your manhood and then hitting town when it gets all dark and spooky.
Brilliant!
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