A few days ago I joined the crowds of backpackers in Vang Vieng to engage in the ritual of floating down the local river on an inflated tractor tube and jumping of things.
That's when I met Mike from England. Mike will celebrate his eighty first birthday this week and decided that floating down the river with a bunch of twenty somethings and one middle aged man, me, was just the thing to do.
Now the actual floating is just a minor part of the entertainment. At various parts along the river bars have been set up with attractions like diving platforms and flying foxes that allow you to show your skill in splashing into the water from great height all for the price of a bottle of beer.
Where I shy away from anything over five meters high Mike has no such qualms and even jumped of a trapeze swing that was about fifteen meters above the river.
I hope that I can do things like that by the time that I am eighty.
