Tubes of Arnica!

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Bry speaking: Any of you who know anything of Vang Vieng will know that it is famous for Tubing... which is basically a pub crawl along the river in a tractor inner-tube. Each of the beer stops competes to have the best water slide and much watery fun is had by all. So, after a day in Vang Vieng we signed up to join the 18 year olds in getting drunk and wet. It was cool, as expected we didn't find anyone who we didn't have at least five years on... but hey I mean we've lived, right ;-)

Anyway, one pint down and I didn't have the guts to do the death slide, so Tom had a few goes for me. A few pints later and after watching a number of people do the highest slide I'd ever seen I plucked up the courage to join them... I mean none of them had made a fool of themselves! So, glasses off and I'm now as blind as a bat... which I thought might actually be an advatage in summoning the courage to make the leap. As it turned out, my hands slipped right at the top and I went head long and face first into the river... taking the full force with my right eye. So, that was all the slides for me... sheepishly returning to my seat I decided to drown my sorrows with a few more beers - which did the trick and we were soon back enjoying ourselves. It was cool that my little camera is waterproof 'cos we got some great photos, Tom suffered much moaning from me checking the strap was looped around his wrist... then my turn to take a few snaps. And yes, I dropped it! Fortunately, I managed to hold on to my beer... I've clearly got my priorities straight. A couple of local kids jumped in with their diving masks to help us look, but after an hour or so we gave in. I hope one of them found it and sold it for a pretty penny... much better than it lying on the riverbed I reckon. Reckon we were pretty lucky, just that morning Tom had offloaded all my photos to CD, so only one day's snaps lost. Not much else doing in Vang Vieng except for Happy Menus and lines of stoned teenagers wathcing Friends... a bit dull really.

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Photos

Bry tries her hand at modelling
Adding to my collection of beer-ad photos, I roped Bry in this time. She's told me to stick to sunsets. P.S. This is the view from our balcony in Vang Vieng - stunning karst scenery in the background

Sunset
Beautiful sunsets over the river