Today was tubing day. This basically involved sitting in an inner tube from a tractor tyre and spending the day floating downstream on the Nam Xong River. For the more adventurous you could opt to leave your tube to climb up onto one of the wooden constructions to jump or swing into the river. As you can imagine it was a highly stressful affair and to combat this our group of 9 had to have regular stops to drink some Beer Lao. On some occasions it was just too stressful to even leave the tube so we had to pick up a beer as we floated past the stall. Seriously though, it was a fantastic day and an excellent way to stay cool in the blazing sunshine. The river was very calm and full of children playing and the scenery was just beautiful - these are the days that will stick in our memories for a long time to come. Steve entertained himself on our breaks by playing football with the local guys....this was far too energetic for the rest of us so we sought out the shade and responded positively to the cries of "Come on, come on, Beer Lao" - well it would be rude not to. Carly and I did go off for a brief walk into a cliff lined passage full of butterflies which was very pretty. After 6 hours of drifting we reached the end of the line for tubers and as we hauled our weary bodies out of the water and back to the shop we agreed that it had been a great day.