Vang Vieng - 12th October 2009

we caught our first tube today man (rough quote from point break said keano reeves stylee!!). so even mum had heard of bad things on this river and within 30 minutes we saw an example. The first bar had a ‘swing’ that dropped people from a serious height into the river and as I have a fear of cutting myself (especially after the coral incident) I kind of knew that although higher up the further out you swung the chances were the water was deeper too so it was probably safest. The first girl to do the jump that day that we saw clearly thought she’d done her achievement by jumping off the platform and let go of the swing far too early to do a spectacular belly flop into shallow water. She managed to swim close to shore pretty shook up but the second she made contact with a tuber she passed out. She came to and was fine after that and continued her day but it was certainly a lesson that although hilarious to watch people jumping, if you’re lacking in confidence it’s a bad idea! Naturally my confidence grew as the day went on and although liam jumped on the first (and highest) swing and tried out pretty much everything there was, I saved myself til the 5th bar and lowest swing to have a go! We also tried the slide which I thought would be pretty harmless but boy did that hurt! With no control over entry as you’re catapulted at speed from the bottom you end up slamming your back on water which is never a good thing. It had started to rain by that stage and light was fading fast so it was back to the water to try to go home.

As we’d seriously under estimated the deposits we needed to pay for tubes and dry bag rental we had spent all our money on alcohol and hadn’t enough for the tuk tuk fare back to town. We knew the drift downriver from the last bar was approx 50 minutes so we set off in a pack of tubes all clinging on to each other! Within minutes we had separated and it was me and liam and one other guy on our own in the dark and with rain and now thunder and lightening to guide us! Thank god he was there because I reckon on our own I would’ve freaked out! We made it back and will look back on that journey with fond memories but knew we would not be doing it again too soon!!