Jason Devitt

And now for something completely different.

In the People’s Democratic Republic of Lao, near the little town of Vang Vieng, there is a river called the Nam Song that you can float down in a rubber tube while drinking beer. This seemed like a very silly thing to do. Summer and I could hardly wait.

Tubing the Nam Song costs about $3. For this you - the ‘tuber’ - get one tube, a ride to the starting point, and if you are a miserable coward, a lifejacket. (In the dry season for most of its length the river is one foot deep.)

The tubes are old inner tubes from tractor tires: about three feet wide, black but heavily stained, patched and repatched, each patch presumably a mute tribute to a tuber who didn’t make it. A six inch-long steel valve pokes out of the tube wall and tries to get into your shorts. You throw the tube in the river, climb in so that your arms and legs are splayed across it, and let the current take you. That’s it.

We were about to travel four kilometers in four hours; an average speed of one kilometer per hour, if you need help. Occasionally we would slip down ‘rapids,’ where rapid meant two kilometers per hour. At other times the river broadened and deepened and we seemed to stop completely.

Where the water was deep enough, there were swimming holes with makeshift bars, dance music, jumping platforms, and even ziplines. Backpackers taking a break from the spiritual part of their South-East Asian journeys could strip off, tank up, and ride a zipline that stopped dead halfway across the river, sending them belly-first into the water.

The biggest party was just a few hundred meters from the starting point. There, at the foot of the stark grey limestone cliffs that line the west bank of the Nam Song, someone had hacked a clearing in the jungle and built a bar, a restaurant, and a terrifyingly flimsy-looking forty foot-high jumping platform, all out of bamboo. A loudspeaker powered by car batteries pumped out hip-hop and dance music that could be heard from hundreds of meters away, and dozens of mostly twenty-something kids were drinking and diving.

What a wonderful location for a slasher movie, I thought. There is even a perfect Lao backstory. Forty per cent of the population are animist and believe that dozens of spirits govern our minds and bodies. What if the spirits of a dead sociopath had taken refuge in the jungle at the foot of the cliffs? At that very moment, over the crackling loudspeaker, Dolores O’Riordan began to sing Zombie. I saw kids being decapitated by ziplines, crushed as the bamboo towers collapsed, sucked out of their tubes into angry frothing water …

We drifted by. Dolores slowly faded. I explained to Summer that the strangled cry that she and her highschool friends had tried so hard to imitate - "Zuh-Om-Bye, Zuh-Om-Bye, Zuh-Om-Bye! Ay-uh! AY-UH!" - was not a clever vocal trick, but a dumb Limerick accent.

Around the next bend there was a much simpler structure, a wooden platform with a flat roof. A group of locals were enjoying a day off; one had a guitar and they were singing in Lao. When they saw us coming, they switched to English and shouted to us to join in. Only then did we realize that they were singing "No Woman No Cry."

Picture a nearly naked chalk-white Irishman floating in an inner tube, channeling Bob Marley, backed by a Lao choir. Summer paddled away frantically.

Presently (seems like the right word to describe a vague interval of time on an epic riverine journey), we saw three children standing by the river bank, waving and shouting ‘hello,’ as little kids do all over South-East Asia. We waved and shouted back, but something was wrong, because the kids were getting irritated. Then we realized that they were calling out ‘Beer Lao, Beer Lao,’ and trying to sell us booze. Thirsty, but reluctant to buy alcohol from schoolchildren, we floated past in a disapproving manner.

All along the river we heard the cry of ‘Beer Lao, Beer Lao,’ echoing off the limestone cliffs. Some people had rickety waterfront bars, some just had a sixpack and a cheery smile. As inner tubes are not very maneuverable, the bartenders each had a rope tied to a bamboo pole which they cast into the water for us to grab. Then they hauled us ashore, sold us a beer, and shoved us back into the water. Truly, these were Fishers of Men.

At the next liquor-stop, we bought a bottle each. 640 ml (just over a pint) of beer cost $1. We drifted on, into the Heart of Bliss.

Up to a point. Spending a few hours with your toes in the hot sun and your ass in cold water is one way to learn about the principle of refrigeration, with your blood playing the role of freon. And a bladder full of Beer Lao should not be immersed in cold water, if you are too old or too uptight to pee in your shorts. By the last hour we and other tubers were trying to speed things up.

Techniques of propulsion include kneeling or lying face down on top of your tube while pulling yourself through the water (not wise if you are losing your hair and self-conscious about it); the one-handed side paddle (illustrated above, with a foot-tow); the backstroke (recommended); any of the above while wearing flip-flops or sandals on your hands; and of course free-riding, or getting a tow from another tube or passing kayak. Combinations are also possible, where couples and very close friends lock arms or legs and paddle simultaneously (may cause bickering).

At the finishing point, young kids appeared again, up to their waists in water and offering to drag us ashore. A white adult being hauled up a beach in an inner tube by a team of Lao children is a strange little parody of colonialism. While we were watching this, a Lao man stepped into the water, took off all his clothes, yawned and began to bathe. All around him tubers drifted by, and children played or touted for business. His scrawny ass is the last thing I remember before we touched land.

This entry was posted on Sunday, February 12th, 2006 at 5:53 am and is filed under Travel. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.