Tubing and almost bar fight...

I also spent one day in Vang Vieng. I did not really plan to go here, but it happen to be on the way. Vang Vieng is a chill out place design for tourist. There is whole quarter of pubs and restaurants that are looping friends episodes. I had a feeling that this place completely does not fit to Lao and was very artificial touristic bubble. One of the main attraction of Van Vieng is tubing. One is renting a car inner tube and floating down the river in between amazing mountains. Nowadays this river is also surrounded by the bars for "tubing" tourists. We tubed with Stefan, Vik and another Malaysian guy and stop at one bar where we played mood volleyball. Mood volleyball is just simply a volleyball played on the mood field. Before we start a game we grabbed a beer.

The beer was gently overpriced but in Laos (although not so strong as in India), there is a custom of bargaining and we agreed on 25% discount for three ordered beer. To keep the drinks cold we picked up two and the last one was kept in the fridge to enjoy it after the game. When we finished the game the boss of the bar showed up. The waiter for long time discussed our discount with the boss but the boss was very stubborn and did not want to agree for this, and did not wanted to give us final beer for which we already paid. Finally he used swear word towards us "Fuck off". I pointed out that I do not agree that he would use words like this towards us. And then the owner frighten us with a stick saying that in the moment he will use this stick towards us. And in few seconds to emphasize his words he took even longer stick than before.

Image the situation, he was there with two other waiters and his long stick, but we were four, everyone of us was much bigger than the owner, even with his long stick. More over one of us, Stefan was an ex-rugby player with some military training...

The owner seemed to behave completely irrational, probably he was on kind of drugs.

Luckily we were smarter and we retracted from the bar together with all other guests.

I have not been ever so close to the bar fight. I guess the most ridiculous was the reason for it, several cents discount for a beer, that one of the waiter agree for. On the way to our tube we shook hands with the waiter that agreed to give us this discount. We felt very pity especially towards the workers that worked there. This was also the first aggression towards me situation that I came across in Asia.