Tubing the Nam Song

Before leaving Vientiane we decided to indulge in massages. Over the course of a relaxing hour we heard not only our own, but each others fingers and toes cracking and clicking as our strong-handed masseuses went to work. At one point, Mark was surprised by the impossible increase of strength of his masseur and turned his head to see whether she had in fact been replaced by a male wrestler, only to find that she had taken off her shoes and was walking on top of him digging her toes into his back and legs!!

Our next destination in Laos was Vang Vieng - home of caves, tubes and some of the most breathtaking natural scenery in Laos. Firstly our guide took us to the 'Elephant Cave' to see a dubious natural stalactite which resembled an elephant. He then spent half an hour in the midday sun telling us the famous Laos fable taught to all schoolchildren and goes some way to explaining the unscrupulousness of all tuk-tuk drivers and sellers. A basic synopsis of the (long) story is that a pelican deceives a fish and a frog by telling them that their river is drying up and that he'll carry them to a new deeper river. He shows them the deeper river and they tell all of the other fish and frogs. Each day he flies away with a new fish and a frog and promptly eats them. Anyway, he later tries the same trick on a suspicious crab who doesn't trust him and so asks to ride on the pelican's back and slits his throat and kills him. Hopefully not a bed-time story!

The moral of the story is don't trust anyone. Quite how our guide made this story last half an hour we didn't know ... but we certainly didn't trust his intentions!!

Our next cave was one which we investigated on an inflated tractor tyre inner tube wearing a head torch. The cave was extremely low and had a river running throughout, so it took about an hour to get to the end and back and was both spectacular and terrifying in equal measures!

After a bbq lunch we took part in the most popular backpacker activities in Vang Vieng - 'tubing' down the Nam Song river. This basically involves sitting inside one of the giant inner tubes and floating down the river, allowing yourself to be pulled into various bars en route, all blasting pumping-House music, to drink Beerlao or a bucket of cocktail. Most of the bars had rope swings, cable runways and giant slides just to add to the excitement (danger) of it all! It took about 5 hours to cover the 4km route, however much of this time was spent 're-fueling'!