Who's the daddy?

Same old story. I'm behind with my journal. It irks me: I don't want to forget any of this experience. I had something of a breakthrough last week though. I began to develop a slightly different style in my writing, thanks in part to the novel I'm currently reading: 'The Shipping News' by Annie Proulx. It's allowed me to condense a number of anecdotes into a single, short, structurally sound story. Smashing.

Saturday 13th November, 2004
Location: Vang Vieng, Laos

"Who's the daddy?! Who's the daddy?!" I shouted, exultant as I raced Steve down the river in a tractor inner tube. I had pulled ahead, using my flip flops as paddles. I sat in my inner tube, my half-finished bottle of Beer Lao balanced precariously between my legs, with my back to the finish line: yet another makeshift riverside tubing/jumping bar. "Who's the daddy?!" I having the time of my life. I didn't hear Ian's shouted warnings, only saw the look of horror on Steve's face as he realised what was about to happen a split second before I hit the rock. Wham! Net result: no injuries.

Late afternoon. We were amongst the last people tubing the river. I had returned for the third time in three days to the riverside bar with the big jump. Six metres, maybe seven. Quite a big one, big enough to scare me a little, big enough to scare some people a lot. Reborn as an adrenaline junkie, I loved it, couldn't get enough of it. The moment you launch yourself into air you ask yourself the question: why did I just do that? The answer, most definitely: because it's there. Hitting the water, no fear of drowning, finally good friends after a lifetime of polite aquaintance. Being swallowed up by it, sinking then feeling it's pull, inexorably towards the surface.

Stood psyching myself up at the start of the run-up, the only group of tubers behind us now scrambling up the slippery mud steps leading up to the bar and the jump. I took off sprinting, planning to launch myself up and far out over the water. I looked down with a metre of runway to spare. Two tubes below me, a couple idling in the water in the exact spot where I would land. Where had they come from?! Grabbed the bamboo rail, pulled myself up sharp, but it was too late. Rocks jutting out of the water at the base of the cliff, directly beneath me. In the final moment able to launch myself just shy of them. Still, when I hit the water, heart pounding, I expected to hit something below the surface. I surfaced a couple of metres in front of the tubing couple. Shouts from above. I looked up, a dozen faces stared down, incredulous. Net result: no injuries.

Luang Prabang. Our last day there, which ended with a massage, a sauna, a chicken tikka massala and an early night, could so easily have ended with lacerations, an emergency trip to a hospital in god knows where.

The Little Waterfalls. Fifteen kilometres out of town. Larking about in the water - climbing, jumping, diving, swimming - indestructable. Camera poses in mid-air. We find a spot on the edge of a tiered pool where the riverbed had caved in, water gushing down into the next pool, six feet below. This hole: six feet deep, jagged, disappearing into frothing darkness. We swam up through it, underwater, from the next pool. Steve first, then me, Ian, Matt, all receiving little cuts and grazes as we climbed up out of that spiky hole.

Then, laughing with Ian, I forget what's behind me. I step back. My feet feel that the riverbed is falling away. In the second I bought myself as I tried to regain my balance, my hands swept back knowing already it was too late, knowing the pointy frothing hole was behind me, that I would fall in. Knowing that at the very least it would tear my back to shreds. But before that hideous thought even had the time to fully form in my mind, I stopped falling. My hand found support. A tree stump, the tree long since felled, it's roots perhaps responsible for the caved-in riverbed. I teetred, I regained my balance, I teetred again, spread-eagalled over the dreadful hole, everyone's eyes wide with shock, fear. Net result: no injuries.

We laughed it off. Only later, lying in bed unable to sleep, did the shock hit me. What if. I shook. I thanked God.

Bamboo rafting in Chiang Mai. Poised with my bamboo pole at the back of the raft. Rapids. Falling into shallow, rocky, fast running water, dragged along behind the raft. My shorts, town open from crotch to knee. My bollocks blessedly intact. I thanked God then too. Twice, one for each.

Net result: no injuries. Conclusion: I have a guardian angel.