Bird’s Nest Bevarage – 25% bird’s nest

After enjoying tubing so much how could we pass up the opportunity to take similar tyre tubes through a water filled cave?

Ruth, Nat, Phil arrived at the nearby Tham Phou Kham cave on the edge of town which had been directed to us as the location.

“Is this the cave you can tube in?”
“Yes yes. Tube cave. Yes.”

No! The lack of water and tubes provided the initial clues. We had clambered up a huge flight of steep steps, had our ticket verified and stamped, double checked and clipped (they love inefficient jobs in nominally socialist countruies – why have one person in a job when you can have five? Full employment!) only to find an unimpressive cave of little interest.

The rest of this post can be found here.

It’s taken me five years to reach this point. I can remember (barely) a particularly debaucherous party at a uni mates house at the beginning of my second year. In the morning i sat chatting to a friend called Martha who has seemingly been everywhere possible to travel. She told a me a tale of a particular river pursuit in Laos and i never forgot it.

I’ve wanted to ‘tube’ ever since and Vang Vieng was the place to do it. The whole morning i acted as if i constantly needed the loo, i was just so excited.

Tubing is the most fun you can have with the inner tube of a car tyre which is certainly saying something – some of my best childhood memories involved car tubes!

The rest of this post can be found at the following page on my new blog – Vang Vieng

Ruth and I left Vientiane by minibus. The bus departed according to Lao time, i.e. when the driver desired. For an average westerner Time has long been commodified and clocks are simply another master to be obeyed, but we were ... [Continue reading this entry]