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As sports go, in terms of sophistication "tubing" is up there with darts.

If you want to go tubing, all you need is a tractor tyre's inner tube and a peaceful river. Then you plonk yourself slap-bang in the middle of the tube, legs dangling over the edge, and float spread-eagled downstream. The object of the exercise: grab as many cold beers as possible, flirt with the maximum number of available strangers and try not to drown.

I know the ins and outs because I have drifted by bus to Vang Vieng in Northern Laos. The tubing capital of the world, Vang Vieng is described by online guide Wikitravel as "three streets and a bus station".

The main drag is teeming with "TV bars" blasting out "Family Guy" or "Friends" in an eternal loop and contest to see which establishment can make the most noise. Instead of crowing cockerels, the sound that routinely rings out is canned laughter and the "Friends" guitar theme.

If TV is too tame, feel free to try a "happy pizza", though you run the risk of becoming so unhinged that you wind up in a psychiatric asylum. So tubing it is, then.

The Vang Vieng tubing experience lasts three or four hours and entails long stops to lap up sunshine and cold beers at the riverside bamboo bars equipped with music, rope swings, zip wires and jumps. Between beer breaks, the day-tripper can admire the eye candy and the spectacular scenery of limestone cliffs rising from rice paddy fields.

Before getting carried away, you have to ensure that the river in question, the Nam Song, does not swallow up your credit cards, banknotes, smart phone and camera. In theory, I should be fine because I have a dry bag: an elongated rubber pouch folded over seven times and fastened with a backpack-style click-clip.

Earlier, under cross-questioning, the dry-bag hire-shop assistant insisted that his product would do the job. So I splashed out to the tune of 20,000 kip (Bt80), suspicious I was paying a zero too many, before jumping in a song-thaew with six other travellers - a mix of middle-aged Koreans, gap-year British rich kids and goatee'd dread-locked Scandinavians.

The 10-minute ride takes us to a riverside gravel patch dotted with naked children tussling over the ownership of an inner tube apparently stripped from a moped. They trot into the water, boldly followed by a British couple who had their tubing baptism yesterday.

About 500 adventurers make the journey down the Nam Song every day. The 195th that day, according to the marker pen squiggle on my hand, I kick my tube into the river.

The tube promptly takes off, forcing me to run after it. I jump in and fall out, scraping my knees on the stony riverbed, provoking sniggers and whispers of "farang" from the children.

I climb back in. This time, the tube rears up, seesawing me backwards.

Finally, I plant myself inside, relax and, steering with my hands, cruise along the slow, dirty green river whose flow is interrupted by rapids with no more kick than a feng shui-inspired water feature.

Soon, the first bar looms into view, belting out Ricky Martin's "La Vida Loca", a song sung by drunk pirates about to face a firing squad, I once read.

Grabbing the bamboo barge pole that a barman extends, I reel myself ashore and meet a tribe of Brits led by Guy, a Home Counties type with not a hair out of place. While I sip my bottle of Beer Lao, Guy tells me that "getting wasted" is a bad idea because, only last week, a girl who jumped off a platform clashed with a tube-rider head-to-head.

The tube-rider apparently escaped serious injury. But she "ripped her jaw off", Guy says, lending credence to a blog posting I read, which reported an actual drowning. Everyone falls silent.

Because I have docked I feel obliged to pull at least one Tarzan stunt. So I finish my beer then make my way up the skinny bamboo ladder, grip the handle of the aerial slide, check that nobody is lurking below, and feel the tension.

"Wait ... Wait!" yells Guy, preparing to take a picture. The strung-out pause gives me time to savour the giddying depth of the abyss. Before Guy completes the second syllable of the word "okay", I swing into action.

A rumble of bubbles. My body knifes through the water, begins to experience traction, hits a halt, gathers upwards momentum then bursts the surface with as much force as it entered the Nam Song. That blew away the cobwebs!

Dive-bombing blows away hangovers too, according to one of Guy's entourage. The trap is that people go tubing, drink, wind up with a hangover and then feel the need to go tubing again - on and on in a boozy vida loca loop.

For now, Guy's English-rose girlfriend is out of the loop because she has the shakes. Sheepishly, she admits that she taught the boys to back-flip and so feels all the more mortified by her lapse of nerve.

Coaxed and cajoled by the boys, she eventually heads for the ladder like someone walking the plank. In the wake of her splash I float on, soon followed by Guy's squadron. The last time I see him, he is mounting another much higher platform with a cheery wave.

The last stretch leading back to Vang Vieng straggles on forever. I lie back, turn in the current, watch a goat chewing things over slowly on the bank. People have been known to do the journey as many as 10 days in a row. Is it possible to get addicted to tubing, I wonder.