Got Net?

Rather than spend time travelling to the Plain of Jars in the limited time I had left in Laos I decided to stay put in Vang Vieng. I've been here for a few days now and I'm starting to realise Vang Vieng is a great base, but its a busy resort town, with loads of guesthouses, bars, restaurants a few souvenier shops, and smattering of hotels and not much else. All the cool stuff takes a bit of effort to get to - the surrounding countryside is stunning, and there's a lot to see.

At a bit of a loss I figured I'd do more moutain biking and try and fit in a few more caves. This time armed with a decent map (you can buy them in Vang-Vieng at any place that rents bikes) I struck out west to the village of Na Thong looking for the Tham Phau Kham cave. I was taken up the mountain by a 10-year old guide called "Lu-lai". 10 years old. Seriously. I was going to do it myself but he sort of attached himself to me and wouldn't leave, suppose its always better with a bit of local knowledge. After a few 100s of meters climb/scrabble up a fairly well-worm path we got to the cave. On the way in we met an Isreali guy trying to do it with a 1-LED keyring torch. This really, really wasn't the place for it. Most of the cave seemed to be a sub-terreanean cliff face, one false move on the slippy muddy rocks and you'd be off into the black abyss below. My torch wouldn't actually get to the bottom.

Near the path on the way up to Tham Phau Kham there's a tiny restaurant/bar/somebody's house where you can grab a beer and sit by a bend in the river thats pretty decent for a swim, and ideal if you've been scrambling around the dark dirty cave in the mountain above.

Swimming near Tham Phau Kham

The cave was nothing special but what got me was our "guide". I've got an 8 year old nephew (Ronan, hope you are reading this!) I could never imagine him in a year or two doing what this wee boy was doing. The cave was the sort of thing a pot-holer would love, but it wasn't the place for a young kid to be taking tourists into. And he was fearless, No ropes, proper lights or even a hard-hat and he's jumping around this underground cliff. Nuts.

Later at the river he reappeared and starting messing with my guidebook, so we ended up playing Lao-English word games using back-of-the-guidebook phrases. That's how I got to know how old he is, what his name is, that today is Saturday, and that he has a younger sister. Oh, and I now know the words for 8000 and 12000. These are important because that usually how much beer costs in Kip. hehe.

After a view beers and a swim in the river I hopped back on my bike and made my way to the village of Naxom and found the most perfect natural spring with rope swings and trees to jump off into the really deep pool - I tried to touch the bottom and couldn't. The place is called Pou Kham (I think sometimes it also goes by the Blue Lagoon, for obvious reason); it had a few bungalows near the river and looked like an excellent place to stay for a few days - very chilled out and loads nicer than busy Vang Vieng. Awesome. I think there's a cave somewhere too but I was enjoying the water that much I couldn't really be bothered going anywhere else.

The natural spring at Pou Kham

My camera is waterproof so I've got some movies of me freefalling into the water from trees. I liked Pau Kham so much I planned to go back the next day and catch some rays but got distracted at the bar that night and missed it.

Went on my expensive guided tour today ($50) with Green Discovery. They do a lot of eco-friendly tours all over Laos. I'd have got it cheaper but it was just me on it, and my insanely chirpy guide Yong.

First stop was some caves. I'd been in a cave system on Koh Lanta last year where it was just downright dangerous, slippy mud, steep bottomless drops with tiny bamboo bridges to get across, etc etc. And we did it in shorts and dodgy flickering torches. A health and safty inpectors nightmare. So I was sort of expecting the worst - turns out it was relatively tame and easy enough to get in and around them - some of the caves were excellent.

Inside Tham None

Tham None (I think) and Tham Hoi first. Tham None consisted of three huge cathedral like caverns, full of stagtites and sparkly rock formations. There were huge swirly formations on the floor - its other name is Snake Cave for obvious reasons when you see them. Tham Hoi was pretty uninspiring, we only went a few 100 metres in to the big tunnel-like cave - it sort of looked like an unfinished subway construction project. Apparently though its huge, 10, maybe 20km long. Nobody seems to know for sure. Apparently some Canadian dude went in 10 years ago and never came back. Eight years later a relative mounted an expedition inside the cave and his remains were found 10km inside. It might all be tour-guide ledgend bollocks though.

Lunch was really tasty water buffallo kebabs, rice and bananas. Sorry, I mean steak kebab. Obviously.

The next cave was much more fun. I think it was Pha Thao. In English its the "water cave". Getting in was fun in itself. Sitting in the freezing cold water in an old tyre innner-tube pulling myself along in the pitch black with a dodgy head torch powered by what looked like a mini car battery strapped to my chest. Eventually we got out in cavern then had to crawl on our stomachs for 15-20 meters through a silty mud slit in the rock face, before emerging in an ancient underground river system, all white limestone tunnels and lumpy stalagtites.

Buffalo kebabs for lunch	Entrance into Pha Thao

Inside Tham Pha Thao (water cave)

I was up to my waist in water at one point, and my completely non-waterproof head-torch kept turning off. Wasn't as nice as one of the other caves (no sparkly glittery rocks), but getting in and out through the water, mode of transport (inner tube), and general shear stupidity of it all made it brilliant. :) hehehe.

Kayaking

After a 2km walk around the base of the karst mountains we got picked up and driven to the Nam Xong river for a 8km kayak down the river.

The new buffalo - hand tractors!

Buffalo cooling off in the Nam Xong

Its the begininging of the dry season, the water level was very low so it was hardly white water, but at one point we rounded a bended and I had a truely horrible Apocalyse Now moment. Remember the scene where its dark and Martin Sheen and his pals are going up river and they come across the crazy party place? There's a bridge getting shelled, people listening to music, and soldiers out their heads on acid shooting ghosts. Apart from it was daylight and no bombs going off it was a little bit like that. Maybe a few hundred western tourists pissed out there heads on Lao Beer, jumping from rope swings into the water, bamboo platforms with crap distorted techno being played on knackered sound systems, everybody shouting from both sides of the river. Loads of drunk people boinging around in the water on tubes. Utter chaos. I like getting drunk, I like music, On a good day I might even jump 20feet from a rope into the river, but this was just mayhem, and looked just plain crap. No idea where we were, but I could even tell the guide though it looked like the worse place ever too. Like Mr Sheen said, "Never get out of the boat. Absolutely goddamn right". Meh.

Figured the best way to see a bit of Laos would be to rent a mountain bike and have a scoot around. I'd heard about the twin Kaeng Yui waterfalls in the mountains, it seemed as good as any a place to go. Its not visited very often, the best advice I could get was "go to Na Douang". Turns out Douang is a small village 5km out of Vang Vieng. Its not a tourist place, there's no guesthouses, bars or restarants. It was slightly surreal arriving on my trusty bike while all the local kids chased after me yelling "sadai di" in Lao or "hello, where you from" practising their English. Eventually I found a girl who spoke fairly not bad English and arranged for her dad to take me. When we left with him carrying a huge machette I had a suspicion this wasn't gonna be a wee walk in the woods.

Oh dear. It got interesting pretty quick. After walking through some rice paddies and a fairly well worn trail into the forrest it gave out pretty quickly. Now, I've been in jungles before, in Thailand and Cambodia, but there's always been some sort of path, however vague. This was nuts, thick undergrowth, massive bamboo plants/trees (or whatever they are) small rivers, rocks, you name it, it was in the way. Course it didn't help matters my guide and recently discovered new best friend (on account of if he left me I'd been utterly, utterly feked) was half my size, twice my age and had the agility of a mountain goat. I on the other hand was crashing through pretty much everything. Initially I was worried about snakes or bugs falling on my head, but realised pretty quickly they'd have all scarpered at least 15 minutes before I got there, due to the noise I was making.

The waterfalls were pretty awesome - two big 30-meter high falls right next to each other. Because it hasn't rained for a couple of months it was hardly Niagra falls though. When we were leaving he sign-language explained there was more if I wanted to see them. Oh hell yes, lets trek through more completely untouched, natural wilderness that probably only sees a dozen or so people a month at most. So I said yes. hehehe.

There's a video of me stumbling around the waterfalls, river and foliage below. Needless to say I was slightly blown away - all I'm doing is banging on about "jungle, jungle jungle"! Still, you sort of had to be there to appreciate it.

More scabbling around on rocks, ducking all sorts of plants and trees and we found another. At one point even my aging guide that would put Bear Grylls to shame looked like we were a bit lost. Dissapointingly no wildlife, no snakes, scorpions, giant bugs or anything larger than a red ant really.

The last waterfall - found after stumbling down the river

Three hours traipsing through hot tropical jungles in the mountains utterly destroyed me. When we got back he invited me into his house and while we were doing our Indiana Jones thing his daughter had cooked us a Lao meal of sticky rice, bamboo soup, spicy papaya salad and some completely random meat dish which I've no idea of the ingriedients. All I know is it either had a chicken foot it in or something boney and spiney. I gave that bowl a miss. I think I cocked up the meal thing a little. The idea is you take a ball of stick rice in your hands and dip it in one of the dishes, a sort of Lao tapas. Except I was dipping it into the soup, which we had small chinese-style spoons for, Doh. Daughter and woodsman/jungle exploring maniac/farmer dad gave each other odd looks a few times. Or maybe it was because I wasn't touching the weirdy meat dish.

Climbing Pha Poak

I'd seen the Kaeng Yui waterfalls and was back in Vang Vieng by lunchtime. Stuck for something to do I thought I'd go take a closer look at Pha Poak, a small karst mountain just in front of the main range to the west of Vang Vieng. It turns out for 10,000Kip it was possible to climb up. I thought I was done with climbing for the day. It was pretty difficult, with bamboo ladders over some of the harder bits, then a scramble up some steep, sharp rocks to the top but the view from the summit was well worth it.

View from the top of Pha Poak peak

There's a video recorded from the top here:

Slightly ever so shaky hands!