TUBING TAKE 2

The last thing you need to see when you wake up is two freakishly tall dutchmen with silly hair and a girl from New Orleans jumping on your bed because it's the 4th of July, when you're hungover.

Breakfast under the watchful gaze of a Steven Gerrard poster made me feel a bit better, although I could have done with a couple more hours sleep, but nonetheless we all went tubing again.

The first couple of bars passed with soft drink for me, I wasn't really in the mood for drinking just yet. we floated down to where we had all first met, I had a lay down and was promptly attacked by Whiskey the nippy little puppy that belonged to the bar. Not as bad as Fernando though.

We went back to the mud bar, didn't fancy getting covered in clay, so made a discreet side entrance, and headed straight for the football pitch, if there was anything that was going to give me some energy it was football. The pitch was empty so i started to kick the ball around on my own. I was quickly joined by 2 local Lao lads, it was nice to interact with them without they were trying to scam me.

Matt, Jesse and Joey joined in and we had a 3 a side game for a bit. Matt and Jesse dropped out and within about 30 minutes we had a 15 a side game going on. everyone just chasing the ball, everyone covered in mud. Fun while it lasted, but then a few tasty tackles went in and I didn't fancy a second stint in hospital, and fancied even less the thought of being carried off the river with a broken ankle.

I found Jesse, Matt, tammy and Nicky. But no Or. Oh no not again, I thought, but was pleasantly surprised to find that he'd pulled. Good lad! He then spent the rest of the day with his squeeze, an 26 year old divorced London Nanny from Halifax (I'm sure she was just what Or's jewish Israeli parents had in mind for a prospective daughter in law).

I was standing at the mud bar with a beer in hand when a girl came up to me and said “you're from Crewe aren't you?”. ok. So, this was possibly the last thing I expected to hear in Laos, and I didn't recognise this girl from school, so I was a bit puzzled as to how she knew this. “We met you in Bangkok, we were sttood on the street singing songs about manchester and you started swearing at us”, sounds like something I would do. Then I remembered on my first night two drunk girls singing, “Oh Manchester is wonderful” so I responded with the only version i knew. How on earth she remembered me from that 30 second encounter I'll never know. We had a brief chat, they're the only chats you can have with someone you met on the street over 2 weeks ago. So in the past 3 days I'd met 3 people that I'd met along my travels. How cool. I wonder who was next (again I'm writing retrospectively so i know who was next, and it was a fairly big one!)

We stayed on the river a bit too long and ended up floating back in the dark. Not a nice experience, but still quite fun. We got back to the guest house at 9 and arranged to meet at 10 to carry on the Independence Day festivities. I got out of the shower and fell asleep, but managed to wake before the dutchies came round. Matt was still sound asleep when they got here and we had to drag him out of bed.

Tammy hadn't made it, typical, the 4th of July and the only American in the group was asleep. We had dinner, and all felt terrible. An early night was called and we shuffled back to bed. “Wooooooo! 4th of July baby, woooooooo!”. Or words to that effect.