Tubing Adventures

Vang Vieng, the Las Vegas of SE Asia, where people come to get drunk and tube down the river. This is our tubing experience.Let us paint the picture...a river, bars on every side of the river with rope swings to jump into the river, and tubers everywhere. The 3 of us float down the river for some time and decide on a bar. To actually get to the bar workers will fish tubers in with a sick and rope which tubers must grab and then reel into the bar. When all 3 of us have made it ashore we each get a BeerLao with a free shot of whiskey (Beth loves a good deal). After the shot and half way through the BeerLao (FYI: 1 BeerLao=640 mL) Jill and Beth get the courage to try the swing. The swing is about 30m high and basically you jump off the platform holding onto dear life from a trapeze like bar, swing and jump into the river. Seems fairly simple.Jill goes first (naturally since she's a leader) and jumps and swings just fine. However, when her head pops up from under water she says "Oh no, my shoulder". Her shoulder dislocated and it hurt like hell...this is a tragedy for us girls.Now it's Beth's turn. Beth is afraid of heights and when she looks out into the river her knees start to shake. Naturally at this point a line has formed behind Beth, yet they are very encouraging and talk her through her fear. (Travelers always watch out for one another.) Beth prepares for her big decent and takes to the squatting position and with the look of intense concentration; she counts " one... two... three..." still in the squatting position she doesn't muster up the courage to jump and stands up. Again, encouragement from the line and the onlookers. Oh but wait, she can't jump b/c a large group of tubers are in the way and she must wait to let them pass. So now Beth has an audience of the line behind her, the onlookers, and the large group of tubers in the river all cheering her on. Mind over matter they say. They all start counting "Three...two...one..."she jumps! Pathetic really, it's more of a step off the platform and no doubt a scream of a four-letter word we shall not share. She almost immediately let's go of the trapeze bar (due to her lack of finger strength) one arm at a time, and falls frighteningly close to the "Danger Zone". When Beth pops up she finds Liz, Jill, the onlookers, the tubers, and the staff laughing for it will certainly go down as the worst attempt to swing in all of Vang Vieng swinging history. When Beth gets to shore she looks at the girls and says "We gotta go." Continue on the river they go.