The Life and Death of a Lao Party Town
And why backpackers can’t have nice things
It might sound improbable but a small, rural town in Laos was once home to one of the greatest parties on earth. Tubing, they called it. Named for the inner tubes of tractor tyres you would use to float down a picturesque little stretch of the Nam Song River. A few enterprising farmers built a handful of ramshackle bars on the banks of the river and in doing so changed the landscape of Vang Vieng forever.
Like most great parties, this one started small.
It was originally devised as a way to keep foreign aid workers entertained on their days off but word quickly spread along the Banana Pancake Trail and pretty soon it became one of the hottest backpacker destinations in Southeast Asia. A day tubing involved floating between bars, drinking beers, and throwing yourself off rope swings, ziplines, and an assortment of other things that you probably shouldn’t mix with large quantities of alcohol.
It was stupid and spectacular and like most good things, we backpackers couldn’t be trusted not to ruin it.
My first trip to Vang Vieng was back in 2008 and I would return four times over ten years, which gave me courtside seats to its life, death, and rebirth into something remarkably different.
The first time was the best time, of course.
It was like going to a music festival. There was this nervous electricity in the air, a kind of giddiness you could taste as backpackers gathered at a warehouse in the middle of town. There, you would sign a waiver saying that you would not hold the locals responsible for anything lost, stolen, any injuries that occurred, or the untimely event of your death.
From these ominous beginnings, you’d jump in the back of a songthaew and be shipped upriver, where you’d see your first rope swing and the waiver would start to make a whole lot more sense.
These things were immense, some of them reaching upwards of ten metres at their zenith. There were always rumours about the dangers. That one person died while tubing every week, although, to the best of my knowledge, this was not the case. No one died the week I was there and even if they did, it would have been all too easy to push it out of your mind. That was the sort of thing that always happened to someone else.
Not you, though.
You were invincible!
That’s what I thought, anyway, until I dislocated my shoulder on the giant slide. Imagine a huge, tiled ramp that catapulted backpackers out into the river with enough force to punch a hole through a castle wall. I went down it with another, larger backpacker, who somehow ended up landing on top of me, and when I emerged from the water my arm looked like this.
My shoulder was down around my bicep and the only friend I had with any medical experience also happened to be experiencing a ‘happy’ shake at the time. Rainbows were shooting out of his eyeballs and he still managed to pop my shoulder back in, which caused me to promptly vomit all over his feet.
There was a hospital in town. A small, sticks and stones sort of thing, no doubt making a killing off all the injured tourists. They gave me an x-ray, a sling, and some painkillers that night before I was back out on the river the very next day.
Tubing was special back then.
Not just because of the rope swings, the stunning surroundings, or the sweet painkillers. It was because of the people. Those you floated downriver with became your family. Everyone knew each other, or at least they would by the end of the day. When I busted my shoulder, people rallied around me, making it feel like everything was going to be okay despite the fact it really could have gone either way.
I returned to Vang Vieng a few years later and was shocked by the changes. The first and most noticeable thing was all the half-naked people. There had always been a rule that you weren’t allowed to return to town unless you were wearing a t-shirt. This might sound odd but it made sense when you consider that Vang Vieng was essentially a small, Buddhist community that had accidentally stumbled across backpacking gold.
When I came back, it was like going to a Full Moon Party. There were drunk, painted bodies everywhere, stumbling around the streets and lying in gutters. The vibe had shifted and the truce between locals and tourists that had made the town such a special place had been broken.
On the river, things were even worse.
The jungle that surrounded the bars had been bulldozed to make way for about a dozen more bars, volleyball courts, and a football field. They had to bring in a tractor to dredge the river as the water level had dropped so low it was no longer safe to use the rope swings. Imagine, changing the flow of something so beautiful and ancient just so a drunk Australian could jump off a rope swing and not crack his head open on the rocks below.
The family atmosphere that had made tubing so special in the first place was gone. Instead of paying for tubes, people would get songthaews out to the river and steal them. Instead of cheering whenever someone attempted to do a rope swing [a nerve-wracking experience for most], people would encourage them to fall.
I even saw a dude throw a bottle at a girl when she was doing a rope swing and everyone laughed. I thought I was going insane. They could have quite literally killed another human and they were laughing about it.
When I once again heard the rumour about one person dying every week out there on the river, I no longer doubted it. I thought, yep, that makes perfect sense. If I had dislocated my shoulder then, I wouldn’t have been the least bit surprised if people had pulled up the ladders to the bars just to watch me struggle to get to shore.
The vibe had changed so much I didn’t bother tubing again. Instead, I ended up spending most of that trip exploring the surrounding countryside. The rivers and the lagoons, the caves and the karst cliffs, the natural beauty of the place which had been greatly overshadowed by a whole lot of drunk idiots.
I wasn’t surprised in the slightest when I heard that tubing had been shut down. The Lao government had to step in on account of international pressure. Too many foreigners were dying, too many backpackers weren’t coming home.
It’s worth noting that most of these deaths had less to do with the rope swings and more to do with overdosing on drugs back in town or diving headfirst from the bars into shallow water. Some also got so wasted they would pass out in their tubes, fall out, and drown in little more than an inch of water. A tragic end to young lives, ones which are easy to dismiss as bad decisions. But we all make bad decisions when we travel. The vast majority of us are lucky enough to walk away from them with a smile, a funny story, and a dislocated shoulder.
With the death of these tourists, the party town of Vang Vieng died with them. The bars closed, the rope swings were torn down, and it would be a long time before anyone would float down the river again. And people would float down the river again, although in a much more restrained capacity. Only two or three bars were allowed to be open at any given time and there were no ziplines, no rope swings, and no giant slides.
But something strange happened when the Full Moon crowd abandoned Vang Vieng. Something that I would not have believed had I not returned ten years after my first trip there and found the place overrun by Koreans.
Yes, Koreans, with their banchan and their barbeque, had taken over the town. The end of tubing coincided with the start of Korean budget airlines offering cheap flights to Laos and the locals adapted accordingly.
In a refreshing twist, they actually came to enjoy Vang Vieng for what it truly had to offer; the stunning natural beauty. Then went kayaking and rock climbing and even hot air ballooning, which blew my mind when I saw the first one floating in front of me as I stepped off the bus.
They still partied, of course. I’ve spent enough time in Korea to know how much they love to drink. But it had less of the Full Moon vibe and was more like hanging out in Hongdae at three o’clock in the morning.
I went tubing again this time. There were only about ten other people doing so that day and, surprisingly, it reminded me of what it was like when I had first floated down that river. Not the rope swings or the madness but that family atmosphere that had made me fall in love with it in the first place. It was a good reminder that when it comes to travel, all things change. But on rare, lucky occasions, they have a funny way of changing back.
