Tubing on the Mekong

After our exciting day before we started lazy into the next. We met for breakfast though eventually Dudley went up to his room to relax some more while I updated the blog. By then I was so far behind on it that it started to feel like a chore.

Around 2pm the weather cleared up and we decided on going tubing. We had so much fun yesterday kayaking that we figured we had to try drifting down the Mekong for a change. Before long we had paid the fee and were on a tuk-tuk truck to go upriver. With us was a group of young backpackers, still hung over from the night before who seemed like a prime example of accident prone candidates. We left them to their own devices and after getting something to drink started floating down the river.

Eventually we had to refuel though and stopped at a quiet place along the river. And with quiet I mean there were just a couple of people and not throngs of youngsters. But loud music blasting the air was almost everywhere.

As you can see here everything looked quiet and well-behaved. Yeah, this was going to change once I started talking to our ‘bed’ neighbors. They turned out to be Mike and Jen, brother and sister from the U.S. and Gary, an Australian guy. They had met on the tuk-tuk ride upriver. The loud music and the beer were working their charm and soon we shared a ‘bed’.

This still looked quite disciplined but from now on it all went downhill. We had another round of beers and got one more for the ‘road’. By then getting on the tubes seemed almost impossible (of course not for me, I am always keeping my dignity).

It might not look like it but we really made it down the river. Not all the way to the end though because we decided on one more stop before handing back the tubes. Just one little stop with dire consequences. Since Dudley and I had kayaked on the river the day before we stopped at the same place again. We figured that here we had he recognition bonus. And it worked.

But we were not the only ones making a last stop at this place. Five South Koreans had also chosen this bar and together we rocked the place (the videos Dudley made are for my eyes only!).

I really seemed to be in my element here. What a good thing then that everything must come to an end eventually. A short while later we braved the Mekong again and made our way to the village. The tubing rental had a two hour grace period during which they gave 60% of the deposit back and we all wanted this money (the deposit was more than the rental fee). So amid a lot of laughter and falling into the river (from my side) we reached our safe ‘harbor’ only to say goodbye to each other. Yours, Pollybert