Eat the world

Everyone to pass through here must experience the same amazement seeing the jagged mountains silhoetted against the sunset and traced by the lazy river set against a town filled with "happy pizza" (?!), drunken tourists and restaurants playing 80s horror movies and reruns of Friends. The backpacker bubble here is a particularly greasy.

We arrived after a bumpy ride down the mostly unpaved road from Luang Prabang. The minivan we hired was a bit, er, informal, since the travel agent's "brother," who spoke only Lao was driving south anyway and decided to pack in a few tourists to off-set the costs. Thus, we ended up touring roadside stands in the pouring rain, produce shopping against our will for his wifey in the passenger seat.

In town for only an hour, we ran into Danielle and Phillipa, British sisters we had ridden the slow boat with from Chiang Khong, Thailand to Luang Prabang the week before, and had been happily encountering since. The slow boat was its own experience - hour after hour sitting on a cramped long-tail in miniature church pews with drunken australians, a live catfish in the toilet and views of the Mekong so beautiful you were grateful for every uncomfortable, filthy minute.

With the sisters, we went tubing on the Nam Song river. It began marvelously - sunshine and small rapids. You jump in with your tube, the current takes you instantly, and before you know it a bamboo rod or a water bottle with a line attached is being launched at your head to reel you in to the next riverside bar.

At the first stop we took on the giant rope swing - hang from the trapeze - swing out once over the river - twice - and let go. I fell like a ton of lead but surfaced just fine, while Shayle flopped hard and has the bruises to show for it. Next stop, the giant waterslide, where I managed to get my legs above my head completely as I was launched up into the air and then out into the water. Pretty hilarious. By the time we were back in the tubes floating toward town, the sky had darkened somewhat, and the water began to feel a little chilly. We passed under a particularly threatening patch of clouds, and suddenly there was a torrential downpour that turned our lips purple and had our freezing hands and feet paddling madly downstream. Not that the tourist fallout isn't now as much Laos as the river vistas, but still it felt more like Laos then, with only us four stone-cold sober cast aways and the gray mountains, gorgeous even in the rain, then in town with the slightly sleazy "hey you! pancake? sandwhich? cheap cheap!" and the drunken travellers stumpling home, without their tubes, after dark.