Yesterday we went tubing down the river, which was great and we liked it so much we did it again today!!

Yesterday we hired 2 tractor tyre inner tubes and got a tuk tuk up the river a few km. Armed with my plastic bag for my arm, we then floated down the river, back to Vang viene town!! It was really great. It takes about 2 hrs if you don't stop, but yesterday we decided to stop at almost every bar. very scenic journey.

The whole river bank is dotted with bars where there's usually a zip line or a giant swing to swing off into the water. Obviously, with my broken arm, I didn't do the jumps - but claire did! Got lots of photos of her. she had one bad jump where she belly flopped on her side - leaving her with bruises (i get to hear her moan about it far too frequenlty for my liking!! the big wimp!! although - it did look and sound painful!) so as a result of stopping at all the bars it took us about 7 and a half hours to get down the river, by which point it was pitch black and we were fairly drunk on Beer Lao and Lao whisky cocktails - which come in buckets. We were with quite a big group by this point and somehow we managed to fight against the fairly strong current and get back to dry land! My arm remained perfectly dry!

Today we did it again, but this time we didn't stop, so we'd get home before dark and remember more of the final parts of the journey! Both of us improved our pathetic tans in the process! and we can now skillfully navigate our way through rapids by sticking our bums as high in the air as possible, so the rocks don't bash into you and you don't get beached in the middle of the river (it's not very deep in places)!

We've had some excitement in our room as well. We've had 2 disgusting cockroaches, which appeared on the first night. We were both too scared to do anything about them the first night, but I got so sick of not being able to use our bathroom without the fear of having my leg ripped off by one of them, that I killed them both last night with my trainers. Sadly i managed to graze my hand (not the broken one) on the door frame as the final cockroach got squashed! I'm such a loving person!!

tomorrow we're going kayaking and caving - looking forward to the caves - it's been a long time since i've been caving!!