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.
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.
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.
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.