A couple near death experiences, no big deal.

Ok, so I might be exaggerating a little bit, but it's been an interesting past few days to say the least! Vang Vieng was an absolutely amazing place, it was a really small town tucked away between giant mountains. The most popular thing to do there is tube down the river. You basically float down the river, and all along there are bars everywhere with giant rope swings, slides, mud volleyball pits... etc. I liked the floating and swinging parts... but it got a bit intense with hundreds of drunk 20-29 year old surrounding me. There was a group of about 8 Irish guys that decided it would be a good idea to wear dresses down the river, so they were prancing around the bars the whole time. It was... interesting! The bars are just giant decks that hang over the water. There are mats set out all over the deck, and people just lay out and drink beer or buckets. A bucket is literally a pail (like the ones you use to build sand castles with at the beach) fill halfway full with (most commonly) whiskey and red bull. There were definitely more than a few people who had their fair share of buckets that day. Floating the river in itself was really nice, I'd just link up with a few other people from the group and we'd make our way down the river. It was pretty slow moving, so it was an easy ride.

The same day that we floated the river, we also went to a water cave. As you can probably guess, this is just a cave that is filled with water. We jumped on tubes (the water was freezing!) and had to grab onto a rope that led us through the cave. It was pitch black, so we could only see as much as the headlamps would show us... and only about 4 of us had headlamps, so it was an adventure! There was a point where we ran out of rope, so we had to walk against the current up towards the next part of the cave. Then, at the point we had to link all of our tubes together by putting our feet under the tube in front of us. We snaked our way up the cave, paddling our arms, looking like a giant centipede I'm sure. It was so much fun, though. We had no idea what was next, and we were all starting to psych each other out.

The next day, I rented a bike and rode out to another cave with a few members in my group. We just wanted to see a bit of the country side, and had no idea what would be out there. When we came across this cave, we thought it would be good to check it out. So we made the turn, and ended up biking for about half a mile on a dried up river filled with giant river rocks. Needless to say, our bikes couldn't handle it very well and we were slipping all over the place. After what seemed like hours we finally made it to the point where we paid for the cave. We still couldn't see the cave... all we knew was that it was a "great adventure", according to the sign out front. We were all given flashlights and headed up towards the cave, with our 12 year old guide in front of us. The climb to the opening of the cave wasn't too bad, and when we got there we were dissappointed, thinking that all there was was a giant opening with Buddah statue inside. It was completely dark, so we had to turn on our flashlights to see anything... but there wasn't much to see. We were all pretty dissappointed, until our guide went down this random side pathway, and asked us to follow. Basically we ended up literally crawling in spaces that were barely bigger than our bodies. I'm not kidding you, there was a stretch of about 150 feet where we had to lay on our bellies and use our elbows to scoot us forward... and our backs were touching the top as well. There was also water running through the cave that we couldn't see, so all of the sudden our toes would get soaked with mystery water. This wasn't so bad, and I would have really enjoyed it, if there hadn't have been giant spiders everywhere in the cave. I'm not kidding... they were literally the size of your hand. Spread your fingers out in front of you and that's how big they were. And we were stuck in these confined spaces, unable to move quickly in any way, with these beasts creeping all around us. At one point, we were making our way down this tiny ladder, and we had to put our hands on the way to stabilize ourselves. Tash touched something "soft" she said, and I was right behind her. As soon as she said that, I put my flashlight on the wall, and the spider jumped out from under her hand and scuttled right past my shoulder. I freaked out and screamed and flew down the ladder. Also at this point in time, one girl in the group was hysterical. She was bawling saying "I need to get out of here, I need to get out of here!" I knew that I was scared of spiders, but I didn't know I was that scared. The worst part was that we couldn't move away from them even if we wanted to. We were just stuck with them chilling out next to us or above us. I'm not going to lie... I had a tear or two trickle down my cheek. How embarassing! haha.

The next day, we had a 9 hour drive through the hills to Luang Prabang. Last time we drove those hills I got really carsick, so I took some medicine for carsickness that basically made me really drowsy, but I didn't get carsick, yay! As soon as we got into Luang Prabang, though, I stared to feel really strange. I thought I just had a stomach ache or some type of stomach bug, because it really hurt. I couldn't really distinguish what it was, though. So I went to dinner with a few other girls, and got something little to settle my stomach. As soon as I was done with dinner, I felt terrible. I didn't know what was wrong, but I knew that I needed to get to the bathroom right away, thinking I was going to be sick. I got up, started walking to the bathroom, and all the sudden I felt my face go stark white and cold. The room started spinning and fading in and out. I tried to turn right, to get to the bathroom, but I was so dizzy that I could turn and just kept walking towards the left. I finally ended up making it into the bathroom, and all the sudden I woke up laying on the bathroom floor under the sink in a puddle of water (lets hope it was water, at least). My pants and arm were soaked, and I had no idea what happened. I still felt really nausious, so I remember thinking I need to get to the toilet. I don't know if I tried to crawl of stand up, but I think it was the latter. Then all the sudden I woke up and I was completely sprawled out in the corner of the bathroom. I had fallen over with the trashcan right under my stomach, my arm wedged between the toilet and the wall, and my face was pressed up against the tile wall. I had no idea how I got there. I remember laying there thinking "I can't get up, I have to wait for someone to find me". Then I finally decided I needed to call for help, so I mustered all the voice I could and let out a pitiful "help." My friend Jenny was right outside the door making sure I was ok, but she didn't get there to hear me fall... but she came right in and helped me up. I felt absolutely fine after I fainted, other than the fact I was in shock and couldn't stop crying/shaking. Once the shock wore off I realized I hit my shins really badly, and one of them was pretty gashed up. The next day I woke up to find all sorts of bruises on my body... a few on my head, one above my eye, all over both arms, and of course my legs. Ever since then I keep waking up to find more, too. I'm so lucky that I only got as hurt as I did. It would have been really easy to get seriously hurt, considering I hit the wall, toilet, sink, and trash can. Thank goodness everything is ok. I have no idea what caused it, but I'm hoping it won't happen again.

Anyways! So that has been my exciting past few days. Tomorrow we are leaving for our 2-day boat trip down the Mekong... then we end up and Chaing Mai, and the tour is over! Then I'm on to Southern Thailand to relax and enjoy the sunshine in paradise with Christy! If I don't get on here beforehand, happy Thanksgiving everyone! I wish that I could be there to celebrate, but I'll be thinking about you guys while I'm here. Take care!