We all piled into the back of the truck and everyone huddled together to try to stay warm. I just have to say, nobody has more fun than Thai people. For seriously. If these photos of a truckload full of wet and shivery happy smiley people who just got finished tubing down a country river for ninety minutes don't make you want to fly to Thailand right now...
Towards the end of our tubin' adventure, the river actually went partially underneath one of the giant karsts! Check out the view! Right after we came through this underpass, someone was waiting by the edge of the riverbank with a so to take everyone back to the hotel.
At another bend in the river, we were greeted by two more dogs who were excited to see people in the river. They were running back and forth and barking like crazy - and even went so far as to wade into the river to get a better look at us. It was really cute.
The river was so pretty. It ran all the way back into the woods and got really close to some of the karsts that we had seen in the distance from the hostel.
Every time Meredith would start to put her tube down and get in the water, Crookjaw would start furiously barking at her! He didn't want to be left alone!
After lunch, we arrived back at our fantastic hostel a little before 3pm. Kraisak, the man who runs the place, had a bunch of people over and when we asked what the occasion was, he told us that it was Thai Mother's Day
Then he told us that a bunch of his friends and relatives were going to go tubing down the riving in the rain and asked us if we'd like to join them! Of COURSE we did! So we ran and got tubes...
A few minutes later, Scott rolled over onto his back (because when you're on your stomach and you get bounced really hard it totally hurts your back) and his ride ended, oh, about .5 seconds after this photo was taken.
Typically, the driver will start things off mellow, but the longer a rider manages to hold on, the worse the driver will make the ride. Here's Scott about to get whipped over the wake at 30 MPH.
Go! Tubing is really fun - but it's sort of scary because you can't do anything to steer which leaves you completely at the mercy of the boat driver, in this case, Tim. It's an unspoken rule that it's the driver's job to make the rider eat shit.
