Tubular Swells and Interesting Smells

We left a rain drenched Phonsavan and a short 6 hour bus ride we arrived in the drunk British traveller's home away from home - Vang Vieng. The bars all play re-runs of Friends or Family Guy  and we experienced (with our new chums Kim and Aubrey) a phenomenon known as tubing...

As you can tell we couldn't take our real camera into the water with us, so we took this special under-water camera to capture the spirit of the place. Essentially, the idea is to float down the Mekong on inflated inner tubes, stopping at bars along the way. Here they ply one with cheap Beer Lao and free shots of Lao Moonshine until one is suitably inebriated. The bars are all well equipped with terrifying swings and slides into the river and mud fighting/tug-o'-war type affairs. When we went the day began in sun and ended in TORRENTIAL rain! We ran into our old Pai friends David and Lisa in a bath of mud, little did we know how many times we'd run into each other!

After we had recovered from tubing we bid a sad farewell to Kim and Aubrey and decided to hire bikes to go and visit some caves 13km away (go Jenny!)

Jenny and The Beast

We arrived not a little sweatily at our destination and after a minimal amount of scary stalking by 'guides' we got to have a good wander round some pretty big caves - 3km long!  We went through deep water and crawled through some pretty tight spaces...Hardcore Cavers!

 

 

The second cave was a little more disconcerting, as our 'guide' handed us some tubes, a lethal looking battery and head lamp and sent us off into some underwater caves saying only 'Follow the rope...'

 

  

Thanks to Matt's skillful negotiations we avoided paying an exorbitant fee to our self appointed 'guide' and managed to escape with our lives to visit more caves and rivers the next day :)

After this we made a lucky escape from Vang Vieng with Matt on the run from the law...

Furtive Matt risks sneaky pic - evidence of his law breaking ways.

We feared that police dogs could track us if we left by road, so we devised alternative methods of escape:

On the run from the law. GUILTY!

 We joined forces with a group of kayakers to make our way to Vientiane. After a morning of rapids and hard paddling we stopped off at some picturesque rocks for a spot of lunch and a little bit of light 10 METRE JUMPING INTO CROCODILE INFESTED WATERS!!! Will our heroes survive to blog another chapter?..

Yum Lunch

Ok so the waters might not have been crocodile infested, but if you look closely you can just about make out someone taking the death defying plunge. Faced with the prospect of limited lunch rations, Matt and I were forced to lead the way over the edge of the cliff for fear of starving through the long, arduous journey ahead. The food was LUSH mind.