Friday, April 29, 2005

Nam Song 'Tubing'

Vang Vieng, Laos, April 25, 2005

This was a very full day in Vang Vieng.

After exploring several caves, Nee and I rented a couple of Inner Tubes and had a tuk tuk driver take us upstream where we began a four kilometre ride on the Nam Song (Song River).

Many of these pictures will seem hazy because I put my camera in a plastic bag to protect it from the water. These are a group of children who met us to wish us well on our journey. It was 3pm when we started out.

After about half an hour, we met up with some children who were diving from a bamboo platform so we stopped to join them. This was really fun but in the end, very expensive for me because it was here that I left my Buddha amulet and later had to pay a Ransom to get it back.

Nee snapped this picture of me as I jumped off. I went down so fast, I actually hit the bottom with my feet.

Here are some of the children jumping from that platform.

Nee has a very playful spirit and the kids loved her. She jumped off too but I didn't get a good shot of it.

We almost made it to the end of our journey but it was getting too dark to continue so we pulled up on shore and went back by tuk tuk the rest of the way. The experience of floating along and watching the shore and fishermen, was magic.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

The jumping off of things freaks me out. I've seen too many people paralyzed for life that way when I used to work in ER. The fact that your feet hit bottom is not good.... No more jumping, please. Pretty please.

Anonymous said...

I second the motion and I'm tougher than she is. Maybe.
J.P.