After having been quite, ehem, active the day before (I mean, I bravely went down a river with nothing more then a bit of rubber under my ass) I decided to take it easy on day two. I had seen them from the river the day before and so I decided to go there and take a look. Besides most people I know around here decided to go tubing that day and I figured I could meet them and maybe take some photos of them as they came down the river.

I’m tellin’ you – I really wasn’t prepared for just how relaxing these river bars are! You can lie in the sun and gaze at the river while nursing a fruit shake and listening to soothing music or – if you don’t want to get burned – you can lie in one of the stilted huts or in one of the many hammocks in the shade. It’ so chilled it almost hurt. One of my first thoughts was: “Jez – I could spend a week here without moving as much as a toe” and there are quite a lot of people who just do that.

In the evening I met the lads and gals again. You really keep meeting the same people again all the time. It almost feels a bit like you’re on a package tour. But it’s also nice. The people are cool and after all, it’s not like you’d have to hang around with them or anything. It’d be pretty hard though to actively avoid someone in Vang Viang – after all the town really only consists of four roads and all bars and guesthouses are on two of these.

So by the time we went out that evening our merry little group had already swollen to ten people from all over the world. Since settling on a restaurant and any sort of food is almost impossible with so many people, we agreed on the lowest common denominator: Pizza. But this being Laos, and Vang Viang in particular, the pizza places here do not only have the ordinary choices of Margarita, Hawaii etc. on the menu but also “Happy Magic” ingredients. Some add magic mushrooms, some hash. Since I’ve never liked mushrooms I settled on the latter kind. The pizza took two hours to kick in, but then it really kicked in. Later I found out that it actually wasn’t all that late before two of my friends shoved, dragged and pushed me home, but to me it felt like I had been tripping for an eternity.

What made the whole experience sort of difficult was that right next to me one of the Danish girls, Nana, (whom I actually had found pretty cute as well) and an Australian guy discovered their mutual affection for each other. And while I hadn’t seriously pursued her, it still hurt my pride that she jumped on somebody else. Grrr. So I was lying there, almost unable to move, and had to listen to lovebird-talk!!! I still like them both very much, though. I mean, it wasn't exactly their fault that I couldn't move elsewhere. And it was them who brought me home!