A young Melbourne woman badly injured "tubing" in Vang Vieng, Laos, has issued a warning to others not to be "stupid tourists" and take care in the party town.
Her warning comes two days after a 26-year-old Australian backpacker died after leaping off a tower and landing awkwardly in the Nam Song River.
Vang Vieng, a magnet for backpackers travelling to South East Asia, is popular for tubing — a term which refers to floating down the river in inflatable rubber tubes but also includes water jumping activities as well as drinking and dancing at riverbank bars.
Brooke Pritchett, 23, said she endured a "horrible" experience after jumping off a Tarzan rope and smashing her right ankle on a rock in shallow water on Christmas Day in 2010.
Getting medical help proved a nightmare, she said.
"You just don't understand how dangerous it is," said Ms Pritchett, who was four days into a two-month tour of Laos and Cambodia when the accident happened.
"It's a party atmosphere. Everyone is there in the middle of nowhere and you think 'yahoo, we can do whatever we want'.
"But there's nothing there — no safety, no one looking out for anyone. It's a party town that makes money off stupid tourists."
A fellow backpacker piggybacked a crippled Ms Pritchett up a hill to a road where they could hail a tuk-tuk driver to take the Australian to the small hospital in town, a 30-minute drive away.
A doctor X-rayed Ms Pritchett's ankle and told her there were no breaks, she said. He administered morphine, bandaged her ankle and sent her back to her hostel with a packet of anti-inflammatory pills but no pain relief medication.
Ms Pritchett was confined to bed and watched her right leg turn black from the knee down as she waited an agonising day-and-a-half for the next bus to Vientiane.
After a five-hour bus ride to Vientiane then a flight to Bangkok, the Australian finally reached an English-speaking hospital where doctors found multiple fractures, put her leg in a splint and told her to fly home for surgery.
Three operations later, Ms Pritchett has 11 screws and one plate in her ankle and still requires physiotherapy each week.
"I will never go back to that river," Ms Pritchett said.
The Department of Foreign Affairs does not keep records on the number of Australian tourists injured while tubing in Laos each year but does advise "extreme caution" when undertaking "river-based sporting activities including in Vang Vieng".
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