The Dumbest Day of My Life


I woke with a start. As I emerged from a blackout, details slowly filtered into my consciousness: I had a raging headache; I was lying in a bed; the room was dark. I had a vague recollection of this room. Yes, this was my room. I’d made it back to my room. That was good. But where had I been? And how did I get back? A hazy memory drifted up to the surface: me, lying in an inner tube as I floated down a jungle river in the pitch-black night.

I sat up and almost fell out of bed when I swung my legs off the side of the mattress. I laid my head back down. I gathered strength, sat back up again, transferred into my wheelchair and rolled into the bathroom of cinder block and exposed wires. I plopped down on the tile floor of the shower. I’d forgotten to turn the light on — definitely not worth getting up for. I turned on the water and sat under its tepid spatter in the moonlight.

As I washed myself, snatches of memories started coming back. I saw myself belting out “We Are the Champions” with a flotilla of Australians; sitting on the edge of a low bridge, trying to convince Bota that it would be a good idea to throw me in the water; sitting in a plastic chair, sipping whiskey from a pink bucket as Zook assured me that he could definitely, probably, piggyback me up that tree ladder to a platform where a zipline ran across the river.

Dear God, I shuddered. Later, as I talked with friends who had been there, a more complete picture began to emerge, which I’ll try to reconstruct for you now. What follows is a faithful account of the dumbest day of my life.

Cesspool

Let me start by saying that I don’t feel fully comfortable telling this story. Not only because of my relentless stupidity and the fact that I should be dead, but because Vang Vieng in 2008 was a cesspool of Western privilege run amok, and I was one of the many who’ve helped dirty its waters. The town is located in Central Laos — a four-hour bus ride from the capital of Vientiane — surrounded by a spectacular landscape of limestone cliffs, with vegetation crowding every non-vertical inch of earth and hiding countless caves and lagoons filled with water that was an impossible, crystalline blue.

We had gotten to Vang Vieng by mini-bus from the capital; the capital by larger bus from Thailand; Thailand by air from Hong Kong and Hong Kong by 24-hour train from Beijing. There had also been speed boats and tuk-tuks and motorcycles. Somehow this trip had started with a gold medal at the Paralympics, though it quickly devolved from there.

The first time I heard of Vang Vieng was on a message board that some college friends of mine had set up. The “Midnight Ninja Riders Adventure Club,” or MNRAC for short, was an effort to give an air of officiality to what was a group of young adults who had dim job prospects and little interest in anything resembling a career. A number of us were planning a multi-month backpacking trip around Southeast Asia after the Paralympics, and a friend who was teaching English in Thailand posted, “I know a place where you can float from bar to bar on inner tubes.” Sold.

Before authorities shut down the river bars in 2012, tubing was why most Westerners came to Vang Vieng, and we had made the town into a caricature of our worst excesses. There was a main strip lined with bars spilling out onto the road, each one with TVs playing and endless loop of Friends, Family Guy or other American sitcoms. Germans, Americans, Canadians, Australians and Israelis wore glazed looks and all manner of hair travesties — the worst we named the shit stick: a shaved head with a single, turd-shaped dreadlock excreting from the base of the skull. We wandered from bar to bar, aimless but for a vague pull toward the right vibe. Hostels and guest houses fanned out on dirt roads. The rooms were cheap, the beer cheaper, and often the whiskey shots were free.


The River

The morning in question, I went down to the river with Bota and Zook. Bota was a buttoned-up sort of guy I knew from Alaska who would later go on to become a nuclear pharmacist. He didn’t have a wild college experience and was determined to make up for it on this trip. Zook, a surfer with curly blond hair and who grew up in Point Reyes, California, had yet to put on a foot-covering more restrictive than flip flops since he’d arrived in Asia.


Sometime around 9 a.m., we found a bamboo shack with a stack of yellow and black inner tubes standing to one side. The tubing experience in Vang Vieng involved renting a tube, and then getting a ride a few kilometers up the Nam Song river. You then float back, stopping at as many of the dozen or so riverside pubs as you choose. I’d left my wallet and passport in my room, and put a catheter and a few dollars into a Ziploc bag that I then stuffed into my swim trunks. I may or may not have worn a shirt.

After we each paid a dollar or two for an inner tube rental, I transferred up into a tuk-tuk — which looks like a three-wheeled motorcycle with a canvas roof and a set of passenger benches at the back. Zook pushed my wheelchair to the shack, where the owner had promised to hold it for the day, and we were off, bouncing past rice fields in the morning heat. Once we got to the river, the guys grabbed all our inner tubes and dragged them down the bank. I climbed on Zook’s back and he piggybacked me down the hill and plopped me in the dirt on the edge of the river. I lifted my butt into the inner tube while someone steadied it in the water. I gave a push on the bank and I was off, using my arms to paddle out into the lazy current.

Less than 100 feet later we docked at a floating wooden platform. Bota and Zook grabbed under my arms and knees and hauled me out of the water, up a ramp to an open-air bar made of lashed-together bamboo and deposited me in a plastic chair. It wasn’t yet 10 a.m. and a smiling, middle-aged Laotian woman brought us a bottle of Thai whiskey on the house for being the first customers of the day. We sat and drank and watched young, sun-bronzed bodies hurl themselves off an enormous rope swing into the river at the next bar down.

After a spell, my friends hauled me back to the inner tubes and we floated to the next stop, where the scene repeated itself. A few stops farther down it was midday, and we were all sloshed. I’m still not sure how my friends got me from the river, which flowed more swiftly here, onto a platform tied to a steep, cliff-like bank and then up a rickety ladder to the bar area, but it must have given Zook confidence.

Eject!

I sat in a pink chair, sipping whiskey and Red Bull out of a communal pink bucket and watched the scene. Twenty-something Westerners in board shorts and bikinis danced to thumping house music and wrestled in an enormous mud pit. Somehow, we met up with a distant friend from high school, Reid, and his girlfriend. How they got from Alaska to this bar in the Laotian interior I cannot tell you.

Young men called down from a small platform set high in a tree, cantilevered out over the river, exhorting anyone who’d listen to climb up and try the zip line. You hung onto a small handle and when you reached the end of the line, you let go and dropped some 10 feet into the middle of the river.

Zook took a turn, and when he climbed back out and up to the bar, he had a huge grin on his face. “Dude. I can totally get you up there. I’ll hold onto the line, you hold onto my back and we go! I got you!”

“I don’t know man, seems a little sketch.” I was well lubricated, but still — the tree ladder was steep and looked slick. Plus, dropping into the current and trying to swim back to the platform seemed like a big ask, given my current state. “They’ve got life jackets down there, I’ll go grab you one. And we can send some guys down to the river to haul you out. No problem!”

This is where memories differ. I remember declining, and declining again, before finally getting swept up in Zook’s enthusiasm. Zook doesn’t remember it taking much to convince me. However it went, after finishing our bucket, I put on a life jacket and pulled the strap tight around my chest. Zook kicked off his flops, bent down in front of my chair and I climbed on his back.

Zook got us to the tree and then, with a spot from Bota and Reid, ascended the ladder and onto the platform. The Laotian guy manning the zipline had a big grin on his face as Zook grabbed onto the handle. When Zook pushed off the platform, I immediately slipped lower on his back and I clenched my arms tighter, which in turn levered my forearms into his neck. I was choking him out. “Eject, eject, eject!” he stammered out.

And I did — I let go midway along the zipline, about 15 feet above the water, and dropped as gracefully as a crash test dummy. I made a huge splash as I submerged briefly into the river, then shot back up, buoyant like a rubber ducky in my life vest. I shook the water from my eyes and sure enough, there was Reid and a couple of random Euros he’d recruited swimming out to meet me. They grabbed my life vest and swam me back to the platform and hauled me up on it. I was safe-ish.

The Aftermath

That zipline is the last complete memory I have from that day. We kept drinking and floating to more bars. At some point, I demanded that Bota throw me into the river from a low bridge. Even though I was still wearing a life jacket, he, to my everlasting thanks, declined. We forgot that it took nearly an hour to float back to town from the last bar and we didn’t leave the last bar ’til sunset. A few minutes later, with the last of the daylight already gone from the sky, we happened on a half dozen Australians belting out classic rock at the tops of their lungs. Since no one knew how far town was, we decided to grab onto each other’s inner tubes so that if anyone got into trouble we’d all be together — singing Queen, of course.

Somehow we made it back to town. Somehow my wheelchair was still there. Somehow I made it to my hotel room and into my bed. Somehow I didn’t die. I wish I could tell you that this episode had an immediate and lasting impact on our behavior. It didn’t. The months-long binge continued as we romped our way, obliviously, across Laos, Vietnam, Cambodia, and back to Thailand.

I suppose it did eventually teach me that I could be just as stupid and reckless as any nondisabled person could. And that turned out to be strangely revelatory — because it meant that my disability didn’t make me special or grant me any inherent wisdom. Learning how not to be an idiot was going to be on me.


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Alan Toy
Alan Toy
2 years ago

Stupidest? Nah, dude. That was probably the of the best days of your life. Rock on, brother!

Jayne
Jayne
2 years ago

Dumbest day? Best day? Or both? It gave you a great story well told! From someone who did a lot of stupid shit in her early and youthful SCI days.