Oh my Buddha again! I woke up this morning to Lydia crying and telling people what had happened to her last night while she was out drinking in town. It was about 4am and she was crossing the bridge that went over the river to the Bucket Bar and while she was stopped talking to some guy she just stepped back, lost her footing and fell through the railings in to the river. It was a rickety old bamboo and wood bridge that had very uneven boards and there was no real had rail along it either and somehow she managed to find the only hole in the side and fall through.

She lost her shoes, her camera with all her photos on so far in her trip and her money. Luckily she had left her passport and debit card at the hostel. When she had calmed down a bit, Ed and I went along with her to the bridge to see if there was any chance of finding her camera in the daylight. We got to the bridge and she was very luck not to hurt herself. The bridge was around 20 foot high above the water and there were many sharp objects that she could have fallen against and where she said she fell in, the water only looked a couple of feet deep. She was so lucky, and a lost camera is nothing when she managed to not hurt herself or even worse.

As you would believe, there was no sign of her camera or any of her belongings, so we headed back to the hostel.

Today was going to be the first day tubing and actually getting a tube and floating down the river. It was about time as we had been twice already with no tube. We all got ready, decided to leave our flip flops behind as we would only lose them in the river and 11 left the hostel bare footed to the tube shop. It was about 40 degrees today and the tarmac was absolutely boiling, who's great idea was this? We were trying to walk down the road finding any shaded spots where the tarmac was slightly cooler even walking on the shadows of the overhead power cables helped.

We finally go to the tube shop, signed the disclaimer and picked up our tubes. It was 55,000 KIP (£5) with a deposit for the tube of 60,000 KIP which was lost if you didn’t return the tube or reduced to 40,000 KIP if you returned it after 6pm. One good this was that the initial 55,000 KIP did include the cost of the tuk-tuk ride to the start. So 11 of us all pilled in to the tuk-tuk and with the tubes strapped to the top, we set off for the river.

Arriving at the river, we immediately stacked up all the tubes outside of the first bar and went in for a few drinks. We didn’t even get the tubes wet before we started drinking. At the bar, the 4 Irish guys from Cork were there, but this time they didn’t have tubes. I was standing chatting with two of the Irish guys when the man came over with the spray paint cans and they decided to get their backs painted again. This time I asked to him to paint whatever he wanted as they wouldn’t be able to see what it said. The first one got "I love dead babies" and the other got “Abortions taste great”. This guy must have been mentally sick as I have no idea how he thought these up.

After about an hour or so and sitting around in the sun drinking and watching various people show off and others fall off the high swing just by the bar, we decided it was time to hit the water. By this time some of our tubes had been taken so we were told to get someone else’s and we jumped in, floated past the second bar and then got out at the third bar. We must have only floated about 50m downstream before we got out.

We stayed at the 3rd bar about an hour or so and the usual drinking games, shots and rope swings and then headed down stream again. This time we were in new territory as we had not made it past the 3rd bar on our previous outings tubing without a tube. The next stop was a little further down but must have been only about 100m downstream.

The bar was called “Mud Bar” and obviously for a reason. When we got there we bought a beer at the bar and then headed around the side were there was a volleyball court. The only difference here was that there was around 2 foot of thick muddy water that made out the court and it’s boundaries. In we got and carefully lined ourselves up trying not to get dirty, ready to play. By the end of the first go we were all absolutely covered in mud and in need of a hosing down with some “clean” water. As we carried on playing more and more people joined in with us. Then all of a sudden I felt something cut my foot, I had a quick look and my toe was still there so carried on playing. When we had all had enough of the volleyball, we went round to the other side where they had a rope for tug of war over a pit of muddy water. Most of the guys started and occasionally I joined in to help out our losing side when they needed it (cheating a bit, I know). Luckily I never got pulled in to the pit.

By the time we left the Mud Bar and headed down stream to the next bar, we had lost quite a few people and even picked up 3 guys from our hostel that had started without a tube and just nicked someone else’s to float with us. The next bar was the one with the “death slide” so called as this is the one where most of the people really hurt themselves or some have even died on it. You had to buy a drink to use the slide, so I bought a drink and gave a guy from our hostel my go on the slide. No thanks, I kind of like my life as it is!!!

The trick with the slide was to make sure you came off the end very quickly as the water was a bit shallow directly under the end of the slide. It was quite easy to see how people could hurt themselves on this one. Luckily all of our group were fine and we headed down stream.

Going downstream there was not another bar for quite a while and as it was getting late and would soon be dark, all of our group except Ed and myself decided to bail out at the first sign of a tuk-tuk. Ed and I were determined to finish so we continued downstream. About 30 mins later, we came across the last bar where we got out for a quick one. There were about 5 English guys sitting around the fire pit all smoking a joint and passing around a bottle of whiskey. We decided to take our beer with us and carry on downstream. By this time it was getting dark and we were considering getting out at the nearest possible place. We were even kicking with our legs to make us go faster. Eventually we got to the end where we were picked up by a tuk-tuk and taken back to the tube shop. As we were returning the tubes after 6pm we both lost 20,000 of our deposits (less than £2) but we weren’t too bothered as we had completed the tubing.

We walked back to the hostel and everyone was waiting around for us wondering if we would ever come back or if we would be lost down the river forever. We got changed and headed out for dinner.

After dinner we were walking in to town and we walked past a barber’s chair. Rae, a Canadian woman from our hostel had been dumped by her friends and decided to come out with us for some food, said that she was a hairdresser and would cut my hair for me. So at about 9pm I was sat in the chair getting my hair cut, and did it need it. It hadn’t been cut since before I left home over 2 months ago. I paid the owner of the barber shop who didn’t cut my hair the price of a hair cut there (for the use of her chair and scissors) and we continued to the bars and carried on with the drinking.

Please note: I have taken some images from the internet as I didn’t have my camera with me and you need to see what it’s like.