Vang Vieng - 29th October 2009

One day tubing; realization dawns that this has to end some time!! We swam across the river (with Liam holding my handbag above water and some friends taking the camera in their dry water bag) and decided to walk back from there. Without shoes and with a bit of a forest ahead of us we thought our feet would get destroyed. Thankfully there was a pile of discarded flipfops of varying shapes and sizes just at the entrance so we took our pick – gross!! There was some agro at the bridge (the locals were saying it was too late to cross back – we’d stopped at a couple of bars on the way!) which me and liam stayed well clear of. While the foreigners were arguing and refusing to pay a pittance to have it opened we found a FREE boat just a short distance downriver. Despite roaring up at the people on the bridge to follow they ignored us so we got across pretty much hassle free. And even though he protested we insisted our ferryman take a token for his efforts. It was a pity that so much bother was caused over such a meaningless thing. Yes, we were being taken advantage of as we were a big group of foreigners with little or no other options but really in the grand scheme of things they were asking for less than 1 GBP so principles or no principles pay the man and be on your way.