The Frat Party

Sunday 24th January 2010, 8.40am, Vieng Champa Restaurant - Vang Vieng

I'm sending out a distress signal. A self-inflicted distress signal. This S.O.S. is for my health, my brain and my heart. I woke up this morning thinking that I had died because my heart rate had been so slowed by liquor and Red Bull that I was convinced it was no longer beating. Then I realised I couldn't possibly be dead because I was thinking about being dead, and your brain stops ticking long before rigor mortis sets in. Then I decided that actually my brain wasn't working at all, not even a little bit, for me to be having such idiotic musings. Well then, if my brain, as I deduced, was not functioning, and I couldn't feel my heartbeat, then could I be.....? This moronic private conversation and circling of "facts" continued for a few more minutes before I fell out of bed whilst trying to check my pulse, drank a pint of water and felt much better.

For 3 days now Ella and I have been in Vang Vieng in Laos, famous for one thing and one thing only: tubing. On the Nam Song River that flows through the mountains surrounding the town you will find a collection of waterside bars overlooking various life-threatening water sports, from trapezing yourself across high wires, to 20 metre high bamboo diving platforms, and of course the tubing itself - hiring rubber rings in which to float downstream in deep, extremely fast flowing and dangerous, strong currents of water. Lots of people who say they have been tubing do not even actually go in the river, they simply frequent the bars. The whiskey flows like water and isn't much more expensive, apparently 8 lives are lost to tubing in Vang Vieng every year, and it's not difficult to see why.

The atmosphere is pretty damn terrific though. If you picture a Cancun Spring Break, or one of the American Pie movies, then you're close. We have arrived at one big frat party in which people drink themselves into oblivion from dawn until dusk and then throw themselves off the side of the bars into the river. It's no surprise then that this place is very man-heavy. A 5:1 male to female ratio I would reckon, but it's just boy heaven here. Girls in bikinis, enough cheap alcohol to forget your name and have a viable excuse for forgetting hers, a sandwich seller on every street corner, bars with beds that play Family Guy on flat screen TVs, a party every day with all your fellow bachelors, and the opportunity to perform risky water-based stunts in the hope of impressing some young, lithe, tipsy female. Boys of a certain age and disposition clearly find it difficult to leave the sickly bright lights and seedy charms of Vang Vieng, and they're all slightly over-excited.

In the past few days for example I have been chucked in mud pits, I have had my bikini clasp attacked in attempts to remove my top, I have been scooped up and carried around like a rag doll only to be put down when I poured beer over his head, I have been pinned down and had a cockroach put in my hair, I have been written on, I have been dragged from bed and sleep by my ankles and slid across a hotel hallway, I have had my mattress upturned throwing me on the floor into a table, and perhaps strangest of all... when hanging around in their room with them two new travelling companions find it highly amusing to become naked and then showcase their dancing skills for me (Greg and Rich, see?! I told you this would make the blog, congrats x). I guess these things are what happen when you make friends with giddy boys rather than sensible girls.

Injuries and damaged retinas aside though, so far it's been a positive experience. The thing about male company in this situation is that it's up front, it's in your face, and it's honest. There's nothing complicated about the relationships, it's just visceral and boisterous - much like living in a chimpanzee colony; and yes, I am making a comment on the painfully slow process that is male evolution. If you establish yourself as a fellow primate playmate and become initiated into the fraternity, you have to fore-go any expectation of soft treatment or feminine licence. In Vang Vieng I can strongly attest to the fact that chivalry is dead (what single woman in her 20's really believes that chivalry exists anymore anyway? I know very few men who can even spell it). What lives though is camaraderie and mischief, and for the next few days at least, I'm sure I can hold my own with that.