Feb 14:
When we woke up, we planned to go to our usual spot for breakfast but, when we walked up we were shocked to see it wasn't open. So, we continued to walk down and ended up at the place we went for dinner the night before. We both ordered scrambled eggs, bacon and baguette which filled us up nicely for the day of adventure. Walked to the tubing place. Paid for our tickets and gave our hand to the man at the desk and he wrote down numbers with a blue permanent marker. It made us feel a bit like cattle. They loaded our rubber rings "tubes" onto the top of the tuk tuk and we got in with three american guys. Two more americans followed after us and then two dutch girls. There was hardly any space so me and dan were wedged inbetween beer drinking yanks. We actually were being marked and transported as if we were a herd of cattle.

The drive took us around 10 minutes and we were dropped off and handed our tubes. We began all walking down to the river when an almost middle aged english woman gestured us all into a garden bar. We were handed free shots of Lao Whiskey so we downed them and proceeded through the large group of people to the bar.

It wasn't really a bar to be honest, it was just a lot of booze sitting on top of a few foldable tables. There was a native woman and a british surfer looking burn our guy serving and me and Dan both had a can of beer Lao and lay down on one of the mats on the grass. There were plenty of tourists, topless and drinking and mingling. I lay down people watching, which i could have done the whole day. There was a tubby aussie woman who must work at the garden bar, dressed as a fairy running around sprinkling everyone with glitter. Just by watching her i could tell she was one of those annoying women who become even more irritating once slightly tipsy. It was her birthday though so i'll give her the benefit of the doubt.

Once we finished our beers, we got up, grabbed a rubber ring each and walked down to the river. I was debating whether to take my shorts off or leave them on as i would probably need to wee at some point and didn't want urinated shorts. I decided to keep them on as the chinese women i saw getting in their rubber rings also had. We had to paddle through the shallow river into the middle and get in our rings. As we were about to get in a woman approached us trying to get us to come into the bar just down the road she seemed pissed off that everyone stayed at the garden bar but we couldn't be arsed and her bar looked dead so we continued into the river. The sensation when first getting in wasn't very pleasant. The water was cold and i hate the feeling of wet clothes against my skin. I eventually got used to the temperature and the water and so we both began very slowly drifting downstream. The water was still quite shallow so we would occasionally come to a halt as we were in rocks.

We both had our cameras in our waterproof pouches around our neck so i was sure to keep a close eye on it at all times. We were floating very very slowly down the river, it would take us three hours in total to drift back into town and in the wet season it would only take an hour. We took some cool photos of each other in our tubes. There were three french guys floating by us who needed a lighter. The one we had was sligjhtly wet so wasn't working as well as it should have. I managed to get it to work before and was still smoking so one of the french guys tred paddling toward me to use my lit cigarette and it was hilarious. Like something out of mission impossible, he was floating head on with his arms stretched out as far as he could manage, me doing the same in order to give him my lit cigarette which was almost finished. Like a race against time and the current of the river. He managed to get it and light his friends smoke.

Around 20 minutes later, we approached another bar where there were two people chucking the tubers a rope to help pull them onto the rockey shore and into the bar. I was a bit ahead of daniel at this point and when the man said "lady!"'and chucked me the rope i began pulling myself towards him. He has a young boy with him who offered his hand to help me out my tube. I managed to get out and onto the rocks and then i slipped and fell straight into the water, head and all. I pulled the poor young boy who was helping me out in with me. I was surprised how deep it was. After resurfacing i was continually saying "sorry, sorry, oh my god i'm so sorry". The older boy said to me "no worry, he big strong man" but he was still dripping wet because i couldn't keep my balance. I'm glad daniel didn't witness the ordeal because he would never let me live it down. Not like when the branch he was sittin on to ease himself into the waterfall at kanchanburi snapped under him and he plunged in. Or, the time we walked face first into a pole in luang prabang. Mwuahahaha.

My camera was thankfully still dry, in my waterproof pouch so when dan got out after me we walked up the steps and into the bar. There was a hot fire, a stage, a lane to play bowls as well as a basketball net with water cascading out of it. We ordered some drinks. I got a strawberry smoothie and dan got a coke, accompanied with free shots of whiskey and a friendship bracelet. Dan had all four shots of whiskey as i've never really been a big drinker. We ordered two chicken fried rice to keep us going.

It was weird to see all the ropes still hanging off the trees, evidence of how crazy tubing used to be before they closed down most of the bars as people were injuring themselves and dying by doing crazy jumps into the river. After lunch and a toilet stop (worst activity to do when you're ON). We proceeded back down the stairs, grabbed two random tubes and went to the edge of the rocks to get back in the water. I was still soaking wet at this point. As i gently lowered myself into the tube, scared of falling in again, we drifted off again. I went to check ky waterproof pouch and there was water inside and quite a lot of it. s***! I quickly emptied it the best i could and tried to turn my camera on but it wasn't working. I could have cried. How is it possible to emerse my whole body into the water and keep my camera dry but when i was extra careful getting back in the tube, it all got wet?! I was extremely disheartened from that moment thinking about the money i would need to spend to buy a new one. This tarnished my happy mood and so there i was, floating miserably down the river somewhere in Laos.

There were occasional baby rapids which were both scary and fun at the same time. As we couldn't steer us tubes, there was no getting away as we sped up in the rapids possibly hitting large rocks. That was part of the excitement however, which cheered me up a bit. I surprisingly began laughing. Because, well, just because I'm in laos on a big black rubber ring floating down the river, scared s***less of hitting rocks with a water damaged camera and soaking wet money, better to laugh than to cry i suppose!

We didn't stop at any other bars, i didn't want to risk falling in again plus we wanted to get back to the tubing place before 18:00 so we could get our 60,000kip deposit back. We noticed an older couple paddling with their flip flops on their hand which was a bloody genius idea so we copied them. The views were magnificent. The sky and the mountains and the reflection of the sun on the river, gutted my camera wasn't working. We were coming up to more baby rapids but i was quite a bit ahead of dan so i had to survive it alone this time, although the couple with the flip flops were close by. I began spinning and accelerating a lot quicker than usual and was quite a way ahead of Dan. We noticed a hand written sign on the left hand side after the rapids that said "tuktuk service back to town". The flip flop couple got out and so we decided to follow as we didn't want to get back later than 18:00. There was a hand built ladder going up to street level. Health and safety really has no boundaries here in Laos. It was a mission climbing the wooden, wonky ladder with no luggage let alone holding a big rubber ring. We made it to the top where we saw a tuktuk with the couple sitting on. As i boarded the tuktuk, a man walked behind me and smudged his thumb onto the skin on my back. I looked confused at the tuktuk driver who looked equally as confused as me. As weird as it was i let it drop. It cost the four of us 50,000kip to get dropped back at the tubing place and we got talking to the couple, who were american.

We got our deposit back and went back to the guesthouse to lay our clothes out to dry and have a shower. We had a smoke before we got ready to get dinner. We went back to the place with the chicken noodle soup and sat on the raised wooden platforms covered in cushions. Eating like this reminds me of how we eat in Egypt. I find sitting on the floor comfortable anyway. After dinner, we went back to guest house to book a bus to take us to Vientienne the next day. We paid 50,000 each for our tickets and to get picked up at 09:00am the next day so we went back up all the flights of stairs to pack our things up and get some sleep. A very different way to spend valentines day!