Today Shampoo (yes this is his name), the hostel owner organised a day out tubing on the Mekon river for anyone staying at the hostel that wanted to go. All we had to do was to pay 25,000 KIP (about £2) each to cover the cost of buying some food for lunch and also a crate of beers.

First we went off to the local market to get some food and also do some fishing (as Shampoo put it). We actually went to the market and bought about 8 fish for lunch "just in case" we didn't catch any while we were floating down the river on the tubes. I liked this type of fishing, as we actually got our 8 fish, killed, de-scaled and gutted for us to take away.

With all our supplies in hand we went off in the back of the van and were driven up the road for about 45 minutes where we stopped at a house, which all I can assume was either Shampoo’s family house or a member of his team. We unloaded the car and went off walking up the road with our tubes for about 15 minutes. As there were only 6 tubes and 12 people we ended up sharing a tube between two of us which kind of didn’t really float too well above the water but was just able to take the weight of two men. The trip down river took around 30 minutes and although we did have a bottle of beer each with us, it was nothing like the experience I had tubing in Vang Vieng. This was tubing for the sake of floating down the river peacefully not getting as drunk as you can and not even getting your big toe wet.

We arrived back at the house to find that lunch had been prepared for us while we were away and we were treated to a traditional Laotian picnic consisting of BBQ’d fish, noodles and a mixture of leaves and herbs and of course some chillis!!! The idea was to get a biggish leaf, place some fish, noodles and herbs on it, roll it up like a pancake and then dip in the chilli sauce to eat. Me being a non-salad eater tried everything in it and it was delicious. You never know I may even come back eating salad one day. We of course had the traditional Laotian beer drinking too, where you fill up a small glass of beer and pass it to the person next to you to drink, they then in turn refill the glass and pass it on. Eventually everyone gets a drink (from the same glass) and it continues on around again.

After our picnic lunch a few of us went back out on to the river, this time we were driven 20 minutes up the road and dropped off, luckily I had a tube all to myself. Only this time, on the way, it started to pour down, with thunder and lightning too and while standing in the back of a van with only your swimming gear on, as you can imagine, it stings a bit!

It took us about an hour to get back this time and Tom had a waterproof camera with him which he shared with me when we got back to the hostel, so I have managed to get some photos of our tubing.

All loaded back into the van and heading back, a Russian guy (Demitris) who was with us kept taking loads of pictures of everybody, it kind of got very annoying, but he did share them with me when we got back to the hostel. So as we were driving back to the hostel we got pulled over by the police, who checked the paperwork for the van and the drivers and then, although one was a friend of Shampoo, they demanded payment for us to continue. Shampoo paid them the equivalent of 6 beers and we were on our way again. Now this definitely wouldn’t happen in the UK.

Back in Luang Prabang we all got showered and changed and went out to the local food market were we got a plate and as much noodles and veg for 10,000 KIP (80p) and then I went over to another stall and got some BBQ’d chicken breast for 8,000 KIP (60p) and for a total of £1.40 I had a really tasty meal.