Tubing on New Year's Eve

The line up outside of the one and only tubing office in town was huge. I guess New Year' eve day is a big day to tube. Most everyone that comes to Vangvieng goes tubing, at least for a few minutes. Mike and I ate lunch while waiting in line. We got our tubes and were on a tuk tuk with 6 others for the ride to the starting point 3.5km out of town. I brought a dry bag with me to hold my camera, $ and sandals while I tubed. I was blown away by the madness of the starting point. I knew tubing was a big party with many bars along the river along the way but wasn't ready for this. It was crazy, 4 bars right near each other, hundred's of drunk people, some jumping in the water from high diving boards,others on a swing or slide. It was chaos with a terribly loud dance music soundtrack. This wasn't my scene at all. Mike and I got in our tubes and began to float. Mike only lasted a minute until he was thrown a line from a bar across the river and was pulled in. I decided to keep going. I wasn't here to party, I was here to tube. I didn't want to get wasted at 3pm. I floated slowly past all the action watching the partiers.
The bars ended after a few minutes but then more appeared. They tried to thrown me a line to get pulled in but I just kept going. It was beautifully sunny day and the scenery was amazing as I floated slowly down the Nam Song river bordered by karst mountains. The river had it's slightly faster sections but sometimes was painfully slow. I almost felt like I was going backwards! At these times I would float backwards and paddle myself to get some speed. I was nearly alone on the river. Many people float to the first few bars, get wasted and then take a tuk tuk back to town, not even tubing much of the river. I wanted to tube the whole way back to town. The river was low and had its 'rapids'. Over these parts I had to lift my ass out of the water to avoid it being scrapped by rocks. After about an hour I passed a sign stating there was still 2km to go till town!
A lot of people kayaked past me which is a popular activity here as well. On one slow stretch there was a couple floating along, a solo woman and me. I ended up paddling near the woman. It would be nice to have someone to talk to while floating slowly along. Her name was Liu and she was from China, travelling around Southeast Asia. We held on to each other's tubes for the rest of the ride. We ended just as the sun was going down at 5.20 and it wasn't so warm on the water. We returned our tubes and then met up for dinner at 6.30. Liu was a nice girl and spoke good english. We went to a local Lao place for dinner where there were no other foreigners. It was New Year's Eve and I thought we would walk around for a while after dinner but at 8pm Liu said she had some work to do on her computer and went back to her room. Now what to do? I didn't care if I stayed up till midnight or not. I can't remember the last time I actually stayed up to see the new year come in. I went back to my room and watched Crank on my ipod. It was still a really fun New Year's with the caving and tubing.