Tubing day! We were awake quite early and after getting ourselves ready we headed to a nearby café to fill up on breakfast. I went for another American (i.e. English) Breakfast; there's not really much choice here as the Lao people have rice dishes for breakfast and we still can't bring ourselves to eat chicken fried rice as the first meal of the day!

Then we walked down the road to the tube rental office…we were instantly presented with a waiver to sign to say that we'd have to pay a fine if we were back late or we lost our tubes and also to say that drinking while tubing is dangerous and at our own risk! Then it was into the tuk-tuk for the 3.5km ride to the drop-off point, our tubes stacked and tied onto the roof! In the tuk-tuk we met Natalie from Bournmouth and Mai from Japan, who were off for their first experience of tubing too and we ended up tubing together for the rest of the day. We were dropped off at the riverbank and a guy sitting on a log pointed to the first bar which was across the river via a bamboo bridge. We were a bit unsure but followed his directions and we were welcomed into the bar with a cry of 'Sabaidee!' before being given free shots of Tiger whisky - it was going to be a long day!

Then we climbed into our huge tubes (tractor tyre size!) and set off down the river! Before too long we were approaching the main group of bars, which are on both sides of the river. A guy at the first one called out to us and then threw a rope with a water bottle on the end for us to grab onto, before reeling us in - a very good system! Our tubes were stacked at the entrance to the bar by the river and we went to order. We were given ANOTHER free shot of whisky and we had our first Beerlao of the day. We couldn't really understand how they could afford to keep giving out free shots, but we didn't complain! By now, we had realised that we'd picked a really quiet day to go tubing and one our hands we had the numbers 11 and 12 which were written on at the tube hire shop, and Natalie and Mai were numbers 9 and 10. So the bar wasn't anything like the crazy places we'd seen online, the only other people there were a group of Americans who were also wondering where everyone was! It was quite nice though - no crowds and a peaceful float down the river!

Soon, we were back in the tubes again and floating past the incredible cliffs; the scenery really was spectacular and we had a relaxing float down to our next stop, which looked like a family run place. There were two brothers and their older sister who entertained us by jumping off the high diving board and into the river, and climbing up the 'monkey pole' to a height of about 10 metres! Mai tried it later and only managed to get halfway up so she didn't win her promised free bag of crisps! We all joined in a game of Beer Pong with more Beerlao and ended up staying at this bar longer than we'd planned!

Eventually, we made it back into our tubes and continued our float down to the 'Last Bar' - we thought we'd better get out one more time here! This bar claimed to have a talking bird, although none of us heard it say anything, and interesting toilets, which were reached by walking across a field full of cows! By this time some other tubers were catching up with us and we were joined by the group we saw last night at the bar in town. It turns out that they're on an 18-30s Contiki tour and there's about 20 of them altogether! We all left the bar together and got chatting to a couple of them during the last leg of our float down the river.

We had to have our tubes back by 6pm to avoid a fine of 20,000kip (£1.75!) each, and time was ticking on…luckily, we spotted a sign on the riverbank which said '2km to Vang Vieng' and something about a tuk-tuk! We followed the tour group out of the river, up the bank and into a waiting tuk-tuk to take us back to town - we returned our tubes with 10 minutes to spare!
After arranging to meet up with the group later, we headed back to the hotel to get changed. In the evening , we went back to The Other Side bar with Natalie and Mai, after grabbing a delicious baguette and pancake from the street sellers. Then we headed over the river to a couple of bars, including one where you could enjoy your drink in a hammock, as I did, before meeting up with the Contiki group in Bucket Bar. We spent the rest of the night chatting with one of the older members of the group, Mike, who filled us in on all the gossip from the tour - you wouldn't believe what goes on!
A brilliant day out, not spoiled by huge crowds of idiots as we thought it might be - definitely worth doing!