For 50,000 kip which is about $6 you rent a huge intertube for the day, float down a river and stop at river side bars.
If only it were “just” that.
The tuk tuk drops you off with your tube at bar #1, after having a registration number written on your hand in marker, Adam and I were 17 and 18. The bar gives you free shorts (shots) all day of homemade bamboo whiskey and you of course partake in a beer lao. After a few slides down the big slide into the river, you head off in your tube to float a few 1000 feet down the river to bar 2.
When you approach, young men throw you a rope to pull you into their bar….basically it goes on like this through bar 3, 4, 5 and so on…all with a little variation of music and drinking games, including beer pong, mud volleyball, body painting, tug of war, swing jumping, ziplining and on this particular day, about 150 other people having the time of their lives.
After you float through the last bar and the “death slide” you have about an hour or so of floating down the river into some of the most magical scenery…only to try to get yourself out of the rapids when a man puts an oar out for your tipsy self to grab and pull to shore…it was quite a scene.
The town of Vang Vieng is very chill and small. It is a town full of guest houses, “happy” restaurants (where you can order opium enhanced dishes if you wish), and shops that sell the “i tubed in Vang Vieng” tshirt…which we did of course purchase.
I’m glad we went and took the advice of others, to just go and have a blast!
More from Asia
Intentionally and incrementally. Most families who live this way did not leap from conventional to adventurous overnight. They built remote work capacity, paid down debt, tested longer trips, and had increasingly honest conversations about what they actually want from their lives. The leap feels bigger from outside than from inside.
Different for every family. For some it is long-term travel. For others it is weekend adventures close to home. What connects them is intentionality about how time is spent and a preference for experiences over accumulation. The version that fits your family is the right one.
By finding stability within the adventure rather than treating them as opposites. Routines, rituals, and family rhythms travel with you. Familiar foods, bedtime routines, and predictable family dynamics provide stability even when the location changes. Kids need consistency in relationships more than consistency in geography.
That people are fundamentally similar across cultures in what they want for their families. That comfort zone is a smaller circle than it feels from inside. That the things worth having in life require effort and discomfort to get. And that time together doing hard interesting things is the most reliable source of family closeness.
By getting clear on why you made the choices you made and returning to that clarity when the outside noise gets loud. Most families living unconventionally describe an initial period of explaining themselves that gradually gives way to just living the life. The explaining becomes less necessary as the results become visible.
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