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Back-dated entry on tubing in Laos! Headed for Vang Vieng after trekking down from the North East by boat. Met a honeymooning couple and another couple heading the same way so we all decided to group up for a tubing session.
Pretty dead place aside from the tubing, but i think its low season at the moment as well. Gorgeous sunny day for tubing, which also happened to be halloween, although its not celebrated here at all by the locals.
Grabbed a tube, the inner wheel of a tractor tyre, and hit the river after a few warm up beer laos...got straight on with it and spray painted myself with i love laos, a gazillion headbands saying dodgy things & started raving in the sunshine with my new crew.
Was persuaded to get on the first slide, which i took like a pro, but then also went for the swing which was a bad idea! About 25m up on a rickety bamboo hut, you have to grab hold of a piece of rope and swing back and forth over the river before letting go some where sensible i.e. somewhere deep and not over rocks! Naturally, i slipped off immediately and did the largest, most painful belly flop the world has ever seen...from which i still have some serious bruises!
After that, not even the free scorpion/snake/wasp whisky could get me up there again, so i stuck to raving it up on the river with randoms, hitting the slides and getting seriously muddy doing mud volleyball! Good times, but also dangerous times if you are too wasted - people have died & there is a slide of death which finished off one girl...
Post-tubing we hit the bars to continue the drunkeness with some suspiciously home made attempts at halloween outfits! Try creating an outfit out of the contents of a rucksack...
Missioned on off to Vientienne & got myself on a 26 hour bus to Hanoi in Vietnam...super slow dodgy border crossing! I'm convinced that the stop over we made at 1am was not to drop off rice sacks...cocaine, opium maybe...somehow i managed to get on the local bus for an international crossing, but hey it cost the equivalent of 10 quid, whereas most backpackers fork out 280 plus US dollars to catch a crappy plane...mwahaha
Thats that for Laos...Vietnam tales next
Iona xx
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