Sunday 23rd March 2008

Our alarm woke us up nice and early this morning and it was really hot again. We went for breakfast in the Organic Farm Café and then took some washing to one of the places that offer 'Laundry Services'. It's such a bargain here - they were offering it for 6,000 Kip / per kilo, which is about 30p! Afterwards we went and made some enquires about the real reason people come to Vang Vieng... Tubing!

Tubing is basically a bar crawl... along the Nam Song River... in a huge rubber ring. You can stop at as many of the bars as you like (or can handle). They're all playing really loud music and some of them have huge rope swings to keep you happy. We started at 12pm and had until 6pm to return our rubber rings back to the shop in town. The course of the river was only 4km - and it's said that it should take two hours... but that's if you're not drinking and acting silly!

The rope swings were brilliant and the first one we stopped at was huge! The bar was packed and was playing good music, so we thought it was a good a place as any to start drinking. We got chatting to two Canadian guys, Daniel and Wes, who had been at the bar for a while - but hadn't mustered up the courage to do the swing. I wasn't having any of that - and had dragged Daniel on within minutes of our arrival! I had a couple of goes and then Nikki got in on the act. I couldn't believe it - the little dare-devil just ran off and the next thing I knew she was at the top... brilliant!

We got back to town at just before 6pm this evening and we were absolutely exhausting. We had stopped at another bar en-route with another of the bigger swings, and bumped into Daniel and Wes again (great minds think alike). The last part of our journey was madness! We had no idea what the time was and how far we had to go, so we started paddling for our lives... thankfully we made it... just! This evening, we went back to the bar from last night and had pizzas and beer each whilst watching F•R•I•E•N•D•S.

Ha! Lazy River my arse!