We turned up at the tubing station at 2.30pm (this is a bit late and I'd suggest people to leave around 12.30). You pay 55,000LKP for the ring rental and 60,000LKP for a deposit. You loose your deposit if you return the ring later than 6pm - they are very strict on this and you'll loose it even if you're a minute late. As said before, waterproof bags are available to rent for 15,000LKP but they aren't watertight. I brought a smaller electronics water proof bag (10,000LKP) for my phone and monies and left that inside the large bag. This turned out to be okay but I was kinda wary.
So you sign up, and they assign a number to your name for identification. We later found out that there are two reasons behind this:
- if you don't return back, they know you're missing
- if they find you in the river, they know you're name, hotel and stuff.
You then get piled into a tuk tuk with your rubber rings attached to the roof and are driven 4km along the Nam Song river to the tubing start point. 
The first bar is only a 5min float down and do the best drink deals (buy one get one free on Laos whiskey and mixer for 30,000LKP). Laosians throw in ropes and drag you inwards but to get out of your ring is a bit of a struggle especially when you're trying your best to not get soaked. There are promoters who organise drinking games and there's volley ball and basket ball courts. Because we left town a bit later than usual, we had a lot of catching up to do.
The next float is really chilled as you float with everyone you meet at the first bar. Next bar is around 8mins down and is the busiest. By now, most people (including me) are pretty drunk. At this bar, there's a raining basket court, limbo, bowling, drinking games, volley ball and a fire pit. We ended up getting absolutely soaked when we played basketball - girls vs boys but it was a laugh. You end up staying at this bar for the longest; until the sun dips behind the mountains and you realise that freezing your tits off isn't fun. This is the only bar who serve food, (amazing fried rice for 20,000LKP), so if you ain't feeling good, it's best to grab something here.
The third bar is just a quick hop down and has fire limbo, a bonfire and hammocks. All the bars are in a 1km stretch along the river, so to get back, there's still another 3km float. The third bar does offer a tuk tuk service back into town for 10,000LKP and this is what the majority of people do. We did this first time we went tubing but the second time, I was sober enough to try and finish last 3km. I'd recommend leaving enough time for you to get back; loads of people faff around the tuks tuks. We left the third bar at 5.45pm and were 10mins late, loosing 20,000LKP off our deposit.
The second time we went tubing, I floated down with some Brit called John and a Dutch girl called Annabelle. We left at 4.45pm, giving us till 6 to make it back. We'd been told that the remains of the tubing before (which had 15 bars, zip wires, rope swings, diving platforms down 6km of the river) had all been taken down. However, floating down the river, there were still bars open and several functioning zip wires across. The only problem was that no one bothered to float the full stretch so the zip wires and other bars weren't getting any business. Timewise, we weren't going to make it on time, I'd say you need a good 2.30hrs to float down (without any other stopping) and the sun had completely gone so it was freezing. There are signs along the river advertising tuk tuks back, but instead we flagged a boat down who charged us 10,000LKP.
Personally, I think the old Vang Vieng tubing scene will slowly pop up again; we'd met some guys who were opening up a 4th bar in around 10 weeks. In a year, it wouldn't surprise me if tubing goes back to it's original roots.
You just have to be tubing so fun and you meet great people but with every bar offering free shots and cheap drinks, it's understandable how loads of tourists have died doing it. The river itself isn't deep at all, you can stand in it for the most part, so jumping off edges whilst drunk is just stupid. There are loads of boulders underwater which aren't too visible from the surface, so you just have to be vigilant. I never experienced tubing before the regulations came in and from what I've heard, it genuinely sounded mental, but we enjoyed tubing and would do it ten times over.
Here's a link to our second time tubing experience...
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