8th October 2006
Well, that was the most hilarious day ever! Prior to the experience we could not picture what Tubing would entail, but it more than lived up to our expectations. We were each given a big inner tube and we set off down the river.
They stamped a number on our hand, presumably to check we all came back… The river was quicker than I thought it would be, pulling us all downstream. The river bars were dotted along the edge and when you wanted to stop they thrust a long bamboo pole out to you for you to pull yourself ashore.
After many stops at many bars, it was quite likely that you may miss the pole, in which case they would simply jump in after you and haul you back to the riverside. After our second bar, things got interesting. We had several whiskey buckets and were passed around between everyone in the group. Before we knew it we were all in hysterics and lost about 4 hours there. We met a couple of English guys called Andy and Mike.
A local man read us our palms and performed magic tricks. Sadly for Lizzie, when her palm was read she was told she would have 3 children and be poor. Mine however said I was going to write, travel and be rich. You never know.
We saw Sponge Bob heading down the river in a kayak. We cheered him and shouting his name, making Red Indian calls to him: “Come on David (that’s his real name), you can do it, we love you David, go faster, wooooo…..!!”. He seemed genuinely happy with this reception and even told us later it was “wonderful”. Bless. We decided this was a nice thing to do, so performed this for all kayakers/tubers coming down river.
We headed off to the next bar. It was getting slightly dark, but frankly we were too drunk to notice. We had some more drinks and someone handed out a rather delicious banana milkshake, which turned out to be an opium shake. Lizzie had us in absolute stitches with a Sponge Bob impression and the rest of us could barely breathe. I was clinging on to the edge of the bar so fiercely one of the guys asked if I was medically ok. No idea what happened next. The next thing we knew, we all kind of came to – it was pitch black and everyone one else from the bar had gone. Just us left, in the middle of nowhere, up in a bar on stilts on the Mekong with no other signs of life. We must have lost at least an hour, maybe 2. We had no idea what happened!
We got back into the inner tubes and headed down river, completely mashed, in order to get to the last bar and back to town. We had been told at the beginning of the day that between the penultimate and last bar was about 40 minutes from the final bar. By this time it was about 7pm and was getting cold. We were coasting down the river in complete darkness.
The girls and the two lads we had acquired were getting uneasy about how long we’d been in the water; it felt like ages and there was nothing to be seen. It was night-time, there was a full moon, we were floating down the river, no one was about, it was just fields on one side and jungle on the other.
The others wanted to get out and have a look around, check we were “going in the right direction”. Having sobered up quite nicely, I told them it was much further down the river, but everyone was either too pissed or worried to listen. So out we got. There was nothing. No lights, no sign of life. Just fields with corn growing six feet high. Most of the girls had lost their flip-flops by this time and were paddling about with bare feet. The boys were convinced we’d gone past where we needed to be and that we should be walking upstream.
I said this didn’t make sense at all and that it would be clear when we were finished. It is not like we were the only people to have ever been tubing. I persuaded them to get back in and go further downstream.
The alcohol must have been messing with everyone’s brain because after about 20 mins, they wanted to get out again and walk. Donna got upset and said she was going to stay where she was until morning, which clearly wasn’t an option as it was the middle of a field. I told them the best option was to stay on the river and only get out when we actually saw something that looked like civilisation, regardless of whether we were meant to be there or not. Staying in the middle of nowhere, without shoes or clothes was not really a plausible option.
After much stumbling around, more lost flip-flops, falling over rubber rings etc, seeing a snake in the fields, Lizzie thinking she had literally walked on water to the other side of the river – we got back into the water. After about 10-15 minutes, we saw lights. Hurrah. It had taken us an hour and a half to get from the penultimate bar to the last bar. By this time we were freezing, covered in mud and still quite intoxicated. Although it may sound quite dangerous, the whole thing felt pretty hilarious and has been our best day so far. I think the pictures accurately demonstrate the slow progression of our deterioration.
When we got back, Lizzie and I went for some food and drinks but the menu had ‘magic mushroomed’ everything. You couldn’t get a sandwich without magic mushrooms on it, which was the last things we needed. We found a bar showing Saturday Night Fever and had a couple of drinks with Nicky and Fergus and then stumbled off to bed.
…………
Saturday
Pretty severe hang overs all round and so we simply vegged out in the friends bars, recovering. I got a 24 bug thing and had some strange hallucinations involving ants climbing in a perfectly straight line up the bedroom wall, which I watched for about 3 continual hours. Or so I thought. I assume this was from either being in the river so long or the opium shake. Either way it is probably as much as I deserved.
For the first 2 nights at our guest house, Gill and I had to suffer the constant of the local rooster, for hours on end staring about 2am. When the rooster finished, a goose took over and honked for the remainder of the morning. For it change, it wasn’t just me who was annoyed and so we changed rooms and were rewarded with a lovely unbroken sleep – until the construction work started…
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