Oh my Buddha! I saw Lydia this morning and she is bruised from head to toe along her left hand side from doing that belly flop off the high swing yesterday. It looked really nasty and she was suffering quite a lot this morning from it. Why do we do these things when we are drunk, it seems like such a great idea at the time, but she was definitely regretting it today.

Ed and I went off to find the Irish bar this morning for breakfast as we had promised to show the bar manager, Gary, the pictures of him and his mate Paul from yesterday down by the river. Paul was the short Irish guy in the orange t-shirt that was in yesterday's pictures and he was, absolutely off his trolley and even having trouble just walking about and it was only 4pm. He was shortly carried home after this point.

We sat in the Irish bar and ate our Irish breakfasts along with a beer, hair of the dog, but it wasn’t going down too well this morning. We sat around talking with Gary and his staff and they were telling us of some of the accidents that happen down the river and even a few people had been killed on some of the swings and slides. If this was back in England then the whole place would definitely have been shut down my Health and Safety. The pictures I had taken we uploaded to the Irish bar Facebook page and then we left and headed back to the hostel.

Today we were not going to head down to the river and do any "tubing" as we had done it two days in a row and it was hard work. So Ed, Lydia, Lucy, Haas (just arrived today) and I decided to get a tuk-tuk to a place called “The Blue Lagoon” and take it a little bit easier today with the drinking.

I had no idea what this place was, but it surely sounded quite exotic. We got in the tuk-tuk, paid the driver 100,000 KIP (about £8) and he drove us 45 minutes up the road to the blue lagoon, waited nearly 3 hours for us there and then drove us back.

What can I say, this place is no oasis. I was expecting a big lake with crystal clear blue waters, a beach, parasols, etc...get the idea. What we actually got was a narrow, deep river with a tree and a few ropes hanging off it. We were all a bit surprised at what they actually called the “Blue Lagoon”. I suppose if they called it a “Tree with a rope over a river” no would take the time to go there!

Anyway, there was a shop selling drinks and we got an ice cold beer each and went in for a swim. The brave ones among us climbed the tree and jumped in. The one with the broken rib, slowly lowered himself into the icy water holding on to the rocks. You should have seen me, what a whimp! I did manage to get hold of a tube and climb in to float around a bit while people were swinging and jumping in around me. As we stayed quite late, most of the tourists had left and there were many Laos children turning up showing off their jumping skills and showing us foreigners up. You could tell that they come here every day after school to cool down and show off.

In the evening we all went out from the hostel for dinner (about 10 of us) and then did the usual bars in town. Somehow I managed to lose everyone throughout the night and it was only me and Haas in the bar. The clock struck 12am and it was now officially Haas’ 19th Birthday, so I bought him a celebratory bucket of whiskey and coke!!!

Sitting around in the bucket bar with Hass and a few other people, looking around feeling a little bit too old for this place, it was time to go. I said good bye to Haas and returned back to the hostel.