Day L2: We Go Tubing

July 8, 2023

The hostel was definitely the right call. The owner is super friendly and accommodating, and he knows what all the travelers need. Rock Backpackers Hostel, highest recommendations.

He helped store and most importantly LOCK the bicycle. He said many times how much he liked this bike and since it was so high value he made the extra effort to protect it.

It is low season now but there is a steady trickle of travelers coming in and out. The travel scene is returning for sure after covid and it's even better now than it was on my last trips here in both 2018 and 2019.

Tubing is generally done better in the rainy season otherwise it takes forever to float down the river. With this lacklustre rainy season though, the river was the lowest I've seen for tubing, so it still took an hour to float down.

Last picture before phone got water damage. In hindsight it was a really stupid idea to bring the phone tubing.

As it says on the hostel wall, strangers are just friends you haven't met yet. Another key piece of the minimalist philosophy is meeting such "strangers" and enjoying a fun time. It might seem strange to look forward to something like this, but it really isn't. This is because when you're constantly meeting new people and traveling with new friends, you can create any identity you want. It can go in many directions admitedly. But here's how I look at it: we all wear these stupid masks and pretend to be someone we're not anyway. This sadly happens with friends and close relationships. So if we have nothing to lose with strangers, why not create the identity we want? That said, in these situations, I actually create the identity that is most authentic to my real self.

Goes to show you that most everyone is faking it in real life.

ChatGPT was helping me out with this big time. I got into a long discussion about what is an ambivert and whether or not this even exists. The consensus from the chat is that yes, it certainly exists, and that describes me to a T. Unfortunately, many people like to assign rigid boxes and will say you're either an introvert or a extrovert, you can't be both. I asked ChatGPT about how to handle this and 'he' gave some very useful tips. One of the tips is quite simple actually, it is doing what I'm already doing: striking up conversations with strangers. These skills are crucial to hone after the pandemic, especially the lockdown that crippled the population socially. So a trip like this is absolutely vital. Meeting new people all the time feels like going back to the gym and lifting weights when I haven't done it for years. The muscles are there, they just need to be used.

The tuktuk arrived for the tubing and I met up with a group of 12 people. Most were from the UK and they had all met on the slow boat from Thailand earlier (the one that goes from Huay Xai to Luang Prabang). We got along great and the first bar stop was so short it happened to be the only one. Almost all the other bars I remember from last trips were closed. So after leaving that bar, we floated to the end and that was all.

Most everyone was disappointed and our natural group leader Elise made the executive decision: we're going for another round. We negotiated for 50,000 kip each person. They wanted 150k at first.

The second round, not surprisingly, was much better than the first. I won the approval from the group leader and she said they all liked me. Apparently I had usurped the other guy who kept talking shit about them. He was in some other group and at this point, everyone had converged together anyway. Upon learning I was a teacher, some of them admitted I would be the coolest teacher ever. That may be true, but then it became obvious that I was twice the age of most everyone there. There was nothing to do but make the most of it. Some people older than me were dancing up a storm as I had already seen them at the Sakura Bar. Sometimes it pays just not to care.

We had so much fun that the main group wanted me to join them on the rest of their trip. I would have loved to but when you're on a cycle tour the logistics of the trip unfortunately hamper these kind of opportunities. Maybe one way to do this is bike to a certain hub point, leave the bike behind and go backpacking, then return to that point. I've read several blogs of people who do just this. On my eventual round-the-world cycle trip, I'll do this.

Anyways, this trip is about making memories. What I've figured out is there is no point repeating trips to recapture earlier memories. You want to constantly make new memories. There's also no need to constantly post about it on social media. My phone got severe water damage anyway due to the not so clever idea to bring it along tubing. The so-called waterproof bag was not waterproof at all despite the initial test back in the shower.

So with all that perspective I decided not to repeat the tubing another day. One day was enough, unlike the epic three days in a row I did in 2018. For this trip, we actually managed two rounds of tubing in one day which was pretty cool. The group was awesome, they were fun people, and I succeeded in many aspects of my philosophy so we'll leave it at that.

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