On our last day in Pai I got the great idea for us to go tubing down the Pai river. I had seen people doing it the last 3 months and thought it looked so fun. We loved tubing in Laos so everyone was excited to do it again.

so excited on our ride to go tubing and oblivious to the pain that awaited us

the Pai river, we tubed 9 km down it

It was late afternoon, but still so hot so we thought it would be perfect. The man told us it would take 2 1/2 hours and that put us out to around sunset, it was cutting it close but now I was really jiving the idea so we still went. It started out as so much fun. The first hour was hot so the water felt good and it was running really fast so we just sat back and relaxed.

The man had told us to watch for fallen trees, but I did not see any in the first part of the river.

But then we got to the last half and all hell broke loose.

Conner stuck and panicking because the rest of us were floating quickly down the river away from him. I majorly had the giggles, and was not much help so Conner eventually just tubed down the river with me:)

The river was moving so fast and even though it was only about 2 feet deep it was really difficult to stand up and navigate ourselves. Some parts were only a couple inches deep and we were scraping and bumping the bottom of the river, I still have bruises on my butt! Jarrett got the worst of it and had us all laughing so hard from all the painful noises he was yelling out.

Conner and Peyton are very good swimmers, I mean they spent the last 4 years on Maui in the pool or ocean, but I would never take them to do that again. Poor things could barely keep in the tubes and when they would fall out they would get pushed under water. Conner kept falling out of his tube and his tube would go floating down the rapids by itself so he would swim over to me and climb on top and we would float for awhile together until we caught up with his tube.

One time his tube went down a shoot off of the river so I had to swim after it. I was laughing and Conner was standing on the bank of the river lecturing me on why I brought him tubing, he said when he says “yes” he really means “no”.

Then we finally found the fallen trees the man was talking about and he was not being cautious, he should have said, “you will die if you don’t avoid the trees”.

Sadly though we could not avoid the trees, the river swept us right thru them and we got scraped up from our head to our toes. I have a nasty rope burn on my hand from trying to grab onto a limb to stop myself so I could save Peyton from going under. It was almost surreal going thru the branches and have no control, leaves and branches whipping across me, I kept thinking I cannot believe this is happening! geez! We could have lost an eye!

So as we were nearing the end, literally bleeding and Conner was sobbing, Peyton looks at me and says, “Mom this was way too dangerous and you owe me a Fanta”.

It really did take 2 1/2 half hours and was almost dark when we got back, after Conner stopped crying from the trauma and Jarrett and I could laugh in front of him again without hurting his feelings we all looked back and decided that we were glad we did it but we would never do it again!

This is a video from when the water started to get bad. Don’t be deceived by the camera, the  water looks calm, but I assure you, I was hanging on with all of my might!

poor Conner, I put down the camera just in time to see him plow thru a tree!