Ban Nahin and Konglor Cave - Laos

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We left Vientiene bright and early. We caught the 6am regular local bus to Ban Nahin. Regular bus = no aircon, no tourists, no bathroom. First stop was to fill the bus up with gas, second stop was to fill the tires with air, third stop was to put oil in the bus... Why they have to do this at three different places I dont understand, but whatever. Two hours into the drive the tire starts going flat. The bus pulls over onto the side of the highway and we all get off and stand in the farmers sugar cane field. The driver and his helpers get out the jack and change the tire. Tris and I entertained ourselves with some leaves. When you touch them all the leaves pretend to die. It is it's defense mechanism. So we went around touching all the leaves. We realized if you touch the stem all the leaves on top close up. We took a video of it. The four hour bus ride turned into seven. Between the tire and the pee breaks every hour time added up. We found a guest house just down from the bus station right away when we arrived. Ban Nahin is a tiny village with not much to it. Finding a resteraunt to eat at was difficult, and finding someone that spoke even a lick of english was impossible. We knew that the tuk tuks left at 3:30 to go to the Konglor cave (the whole reason we came to Ban Nahin to begin with) so we made sure we were back there. The cave was an hour away. We met another couple from New York who wanted to check the cave out too. When we arrived they told us to come back tomorrow as the tours have ended for the day. I told them we were leaving tomorrow and pleaded for them to take us. They first said they would go 30 min into the cave and 30 min back but we'd have to pay full price. The regular tour is 3 hours long... so to pay the same price for one hour wasn't happening. They finally agreed to take us all the way through the cave but at a faster speed then what they'd normally do. Since I'm writing this after we went through I can appreciate the cave in a different way. While going through it all sort of looks the same. Its really dark and the only light are the guides headlights and our flashlights that we brought along. Thinking about it after though... the cave was HUGE. It was unlike anything we have ever seen before. There is no way for a camera to capture the size, eerieness or auora of Konglor cave. The Lonley Planet describes the cave saying, "Puttering upriver past frolicking kids you suddenly witness the gaping mouth of the cave, your breath stolen before you even entered the eerie black cavern. Passing into the church high darkness (100m in some places), watching the light of the cave mouth recede, is an uncomfortably spooky experience. As you moor up the to the river bank, wandering through a staactite wood, you feel like you've wandered into an old Star Trek set, you water bottle spiked with LSD."
When the trip was done our taxi back was no where to be seen. A little worried we started walking down the road and found a restaraunt. We mentioned that we were just at the cave and our ride had left... we aren't sure if they made a phone call but a few minutes later our taxi driver showed up to take us back. It would've taken us probably 10 hours to walk back to the Village if we didn't die along the way. Getting to the village was really easy, figuring out how to get out was a whole different story. Since no one really spoke english we couldn't ask for help. We read online that you can be dropped off at the Junction (where highway 8 meets highway 13) and stand on the side of the road and hope for a bus to pull over and pick you up, or we knew we could catch a bus to ThaKhet and catch another bus from there onward to Pakse. We decided to just go with the flow in the morning. We had some dinner and called it a night.

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Photos

Photo 2
flat tire

Photo 3
what we think is sugar cane

Photo 5
Tristans funny tan lines from his shoes

Photo 9
entrance to the cave

Photo 10
bug in the cave

Photo 11
Konglor cave

Photo 16
end of the cave