Fishing for Farang.

Vang Vieng is a midway stopping point between Luang Prabang and Vientiane in Laos. I must apologize about my atrocious spelling, but most words here don't translate into English well, so sometimes there are three spellings of the same word. In Laos, with the French influence, there is also a French-ized version of a name.

Anyway, Vang Vieng is known for its TV bars and tubing. Thats about all there is to do in town and most people somehow get stuck here for at least a night, but some fall into the rut and stay longer. We enjoyed the tubing for the one day, but when the weather turned the next morning, we decided to head out on a whim down to Vientiane.


Waiting to go into the river. The kids were bouncing on my tube with me and I highfived them all before I left.


This doesn't look bad, huh?

But, tubing was great! Let us tell you more. With a lazy river (well, not in Monsoon season) we were given advice by seasonsed tubers to stop at each bar as the river would get us back to town in 40 minutes and they said the first bar was the best. So, we come to the man fishing for farang. At the first bar, he stands on the dock and throws a tube at those waving for a lift in. He has two tubes, so if you miss the first, he'll throw the second. If you miss the second, he has this heavy bottle that should catch you instead of you catching it and if all else fails, there is a pretty permanent drift line he pulls up to grab to any of the lines that just got thrown at you. We didn't get into that much trouble being pulled in, but it was funny to watch others try to make it in. The other reason the man stood on the dock was pull the jumpers back in. Yup, there was a trapeze bar. You need not pay, only purchase a beer or soda to use their swing...climb up the bamboo ladder and grab hold. Ethan must have done it three times, I managed to get myself up there once. We spent a lot of time at this bar watching people belly flop, flip, and wish we had score cards for grading.


At this bar, the boys took a turn at wakeboard surfing on the floating piece of wood...


I think this was at the third bar...we were all starting to get some colour and some spirit!

After some fried rice and noodles, we moved on to the next bar...only a 100 yards down the river and had another beer. There swing wasn't nearly as cool, but they had this wood surfboard tied to a tree that you could navigate through the very heavy current, just like wake boarding. Ethan and the boys enjoyed this andI hope to get pictures from the others (that had waterproof cameras). The next stop had a simple swing and most of us had switched to water, so we didn't last there long. By the last stop, we were sunburned and cold (as it was now 5PM) - having extended the 40 minute drift to five hours - so we warmed by the fire and then headed back to the guest house for a shower. Definately a chill night after that experience and went tobed early.

So, we decided the guy at the bar that waited on the dock for the foreigners to float by had a cool job and in honour of his hard fishing work, we have named this post after his job. Fishing for Farang.