Vang Vieng. A town in serious need of adult supervision.

I'm in an inner tube on the river Nam Song, just up river from a town called Vang Vieng, about 3/4 of the way from Louang Prabang to Vientiene, floating very slowly downstream.

I'm facing backwards to watch the sun set behind the cliffs, towering hundreds of meters above me, with trees clinging precariously to tiny outcroppings in its face. The general consensus amongst the others floating beside me is that this is the best scenery we've come across in our combined travellings in laos, which is no small praise - between us we've cast a fairly wide net. The road between Louang Prabang and here comes a close second.

There's a shout from just behind me, "Beer Laos! Beer Laos". I spin around to see a local, perched on a small rock in the middle of the river, who magically has a bin full of ice and - tasty beer! Unfortunately for him, the previous entrepreneur had no change for 20,000 kip (a quid), so I was forced to take two and had lots left.

If you take the tube straight downstream, it'd take a couple of hours to get back into town, but to do so isn't really the point. This isn't so much an outdoor activity as a water born pub crawl.

There are bars on each shore. The staff fish for punters with bamboo poles, pulling you towards them with promises of cheap beer, good food, beach volley ball and huge swings suspended over the water. There's a collective wince as a girl fails to take a good purchase on the bar of one such swing, and belly flops into the river from the ledge, 30 feet up. A tense second or so passes before she breaks the surface, to a loud cheer from the shore.

So the day went. All of it. You get a vague feeling at the back of your mind that anytime now a parent, teacher or other authority figure is going to break the whole place up and tell us to stop acting up. But you look about and all you see is 20-somethings. Grinning.


Will.
Vang Vieng, Laos.

P.S. The elephant festival was *ace*, but I wouldn't really do justice to it until I put up some pictures, so you're going to have to wait till I'm somewhere less back-of-beyond, that has cheaper internet. However, I was hanging out with a lass called Lindsey there, who has a blog (with pictures!), at http://www.travelblog.org/bloggers/lp