Cave Tubing: Every Bit As Dangerous As It Sounds

“Where have all the rope swings gone?” I ask the chap at the Slingshot bar, on the Nam Song river, in Vang Vieng, Laos, where Z, H and I are alternating between jumping into his mudbath and firing slingshots at a row of cans.

I highly recommend jumping into a pool of warm, squishy mud, by the way. It’s one of the most liberating activities on earth.

“The government take them down,” he says. “Too many people get drunk and die. Nine people in May.”

“Oh,” I say. “That’s weird. Because the Slide of Death’s still there.”

The last time we were in Vang Vieng, in March last year, someone had broken their neck coming off the Slide of Death, a lethal ceramic slide with a terrifying bump at the end of it.

And on a river lined with obviously dangerous activities, including 30-foot high rope swings and zipwires over water whose height varies wildly with the season, the Slide of Death stood out.

He nods. “It’s not the swings that are the problem,” he says, sawing vigorously away at some adaptation to the furniture of his bar which requires the production of endless cubes of wood. “Too many drunk people. They hit things in the river. Can’t swim. Big problem.”

“Mmm…” I say, soothingly, and we float off down the river in our giant rubber rings, to the Last Bar, where Z and H will jump from 20-odd feet into the river while I plead vertigo. Rather feebly…

Now, Z and I love kayaking, and the chance to kayak 17k down the Nam Song river while it’s pumping sounds fantastic. Chuck in a morning spent tubing through a cave and lunch, all for under $10, and it sounds, well, fan-fucking-tastic. H has never kayaked before, but he’s game on for it.

“Tubing in a cave?!” says Z. “That doesn’t sound safe.”

“Don’t worry,” I say, cheerfully, ignoring the fact that when we explored the underground river in Palawan, the Philippines, he was ABSOLUTELY UNDER NO CIRCUMSTANCES WHATEVER allowed out of the boat.

“But there’ll be currents. And off-channels,” he says. “I really don’t think it’s a good idea.”

“It’ll be totally safe,” I say, forgetting, for the moment, that we are not only in South-East Asia, but in Laos. And not only in Laos, but in Vang Vieng, the home of the 80p whisky. “They wouldn’t send a bunch of tourists down an underground river that had bad currents. If it was dangerous, we’d be in a boat. Not tubing.”

One of the things I admire about the Lao is their ingenuity. War detritus is repurposed as temple bells, boats, cooking equipment, housing…

Yet, as I inspect my Lao style waterproof torch, I wish for a little less ingenuity.

“That is NOT SAFE,” says Z, rather assertively to our poor tour guide. “Look! It is a car battery with exposed copper wire. THIS conducts electricity. You cannot put this in water.”

“I’m sure it’ll be fine, darling,” I say, placatingly, even as I am glad that he has a more traditional waterproof torch. “They must have used it lots of times before. I think the copper’s just holding it together.”

Yet, as we wobble in our giant rubber rings towards the shockingly tiny gap that is our path into the mountain, I am minded to think that exploring an underground river with several kilos of car battery round my neck and no lifejacket is, well, not my best idea ever.

In fact, I think it’s even worse than my brilliant notion of riding a motorbike from Bali to Papua.

And, boy, THAT went well.

The entrance to the cave is so terrifyingly low as to be all but invisible.

And, what with the dispute over the car battery and all, we are at the back of the group as we grab onto a guide rope and ancient stalactites for support.

In the high water, in fact, it’s almost impossible to avoid touching stalactites — each contact destroying several decades of achingly slow growth.

Yet my concern at the environmental destruction give way to a heightening sense of, well, discomfort.

The ceiling is low.

VERY low. I have to lie far back in my ring to avoid hitting my head.

“Which way do we go?” I ask the girl next to me.

She can’t swim. Though she does, at least, have a lifejacket.

“This way,” she says.

“It CAN’T be,” I say. We are heading through a painfully low arch into pitch blackness. There’s light the other way. “Let’s ask the guide.”

There is no guide. Even though we’re at the back of the group, one non-swimmer (with lifejacket), one ten-year-old child (with lifejacket, can swim fine, thanks) and one adult swimmer (with several kilos of car battery, and no lifejacket), the guide who should be bringing up the rear has gone ahead.

I baulk. We wait. A guide comes back. And, yes, we are heading, hand over hand, down the rope, ducking stalactites, into the pitch, tight blackness of an underground cave, water rushing under us, around us, dripping down…

The horror movie The Descent springs unbidden to my mind.

And stays there, through the blurry dark.

It appears that cave tubing as practised in Laos is less about floating and more about hauling oneself down ropes that are only dimly visible in the dubious illumination my car battery torch provides.

(There is a group with a posh tour behind us — I can tell, because they have helmets, and THEIR headtorches work without the car battery.)

It is also less about dramatic underground caverns, vistas of geological beauty, and — at least for me — more about avoiding hitting your head on things or getting the rope that holds your car battery around your neck trapped on overhangs.

Unpleasant?

I should cocoa.

But good for the upper body strength. We work our way through a tricky stretch where the current is pushing quite hard against us and pause at yet another bend in the river, yet another dark, claustrophobic tunnel.

It’s a safety briefing. Lao style. I catch “curren’… wall… tip your tube up… mus’ turn loun… feet again’ wall…”.

Whether from the accent or the content, both my brain and Z’s brain seem incapable of absorbing the instructions.

We follow the guys down the rope.

And then the “curren'” starts pulling us into the “wall”.

Yes. That’s right. At this point in the circuit, below the surface of the water, part of the river hives off right to flow deep, deep down into the limestone — and wants to take us with it, into a tunnel through the wall.

And to, umm, I guess, a painful death by drowning.

I grab Z’s tube and stabilise my tube. I don’t know how deep the water is here and I have no intention of finding out, but I am not optimistic about staying afloat and in control with several kilos of battery round my neck.

It’s not a particularly strong current, I should say. Not like diving Komodo .

It’s just the certain death element that makes it, well, alarming.

“Turn round!” comes a cry from behind us. We head back up the rope with a sense of, on my side, intense relief.

The guide communicates, in sign language, that Z will be going with him. I turn round, put my feet against the wall to stave off the current, and haul myself down the rope again, one eye on the stalactites which, though ravaged by tourism, still have the capacity to give you a nasty bang.

I’d like to say they look like this lovely elephant stalagmite. But all I can see is headache.

We haul through more stretches of current, a long line of tourists in inflatable tubes, and pause, in the low, dank, chilly darkness, for another safety briefing.

“Liver too high! Strong curren’. No lo’. We go back now.”

While I am pleased to learn that we will not be endeavouring to float 40 minutes further on fast water which reaches near the ceiling of the next section of cave — and possibly to the ceiling further in — without a guide-rope, I, nonetheless, am not looking forward to going back.

We haul back. Against the current, with the current. At one point we stand to walk our tubes while another group passes us on the rope. I am slow getting back into mine.

Never fear, I think. I’ll duck out and jump back in…

Except, with a car battery around my neck, neither ducking out or jumping back in seems feasible. I drape my arms over the rubber ring and progress, inelegantly, to the point at which we entered.

I have NEVER been so pleased to see daylight in my life.

The kayaking, though? That was GREAT.

A couple of days later, we’re back on the river in tubes, not kayaks — for, boy, do we love our tubing — and at a bar called Fluid, where they have an inflatable mattress affair parked in the shallow water.

You jump onto it from 12 feet up. Move down to the front. Then someone else jumps on the back of the mattress, sending you spinning, if you weigh, as Z does, under 30 kg, 20-odd feet into the air.

“So,” I say to the barman — bartending in Vang Vieng is a fab occupation for the young, including as it normally does booze, drugs, food and often accommodation, leaving only nicotine to be ponced or purchased — “What happened to the rope swings?”

“I think it was the insurance companies,” he says. “They had a lot of deaths in May, even more than usual. And the insurance companies have to pay out each time, so they went to the government to stop it. They took everything down, but the bars were kind of quiet so they started going back up.”

“What about here?” I say.

“Oh nothing bad,” he says. “There were a couple of guys who’d already dislocated their shoulders and stuff, and put them out again. But nothing bad. Nothing broken. No one dead.”

Which is, I guess, in Vang Vieng, where it’s at, pretty much. No one dead.

Ya hear me?

NO ONE DEAD.