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Published: August 30th 2012
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Having spent our initial days in the more scenic and educational part of Laos we headed to the party town of Vang V ieng.
The journey from Phonsovan however was to be yet another challenge. It was meant to be a 5-6 hour mini bus ride through the mountains and the first 3 hours went by smoothly and fairly quickly. We stopped for lunch in a small village situated above the clouds with some inspiring views and so we were blissfully unaware as to what awaited us. Thirty minutes later we joined an epic queue of cars, vans, buses and trucks all blocked off by a huge landslide. The digger which had commenced the clearing the day before had been buried by another landslide (the driver was dug out safely) further delaying the clearing process.
Three painfully hot and sweaty hours later one lane had been cleared enough for traffic to pass through and another three hours later we had arrived in Vang Vieng.
With the rainy season VV was more peaceful than we had anticipated and due the the strong river currents we decided to skip the tubing. Instead we visited a nearby lagoon and had a
relaxing day by this tropical paradise. In the evening we visited a local bar where the two teenage boys running the place were helping prepare the outside road for laying tarmac. We all helped ferry barrels of soil to fill any potholes and the sides of the road and were treated to free beers and shots for our work.
The capital was next for us but after having heard that it had little to offer we merely used it as a stop-off point before our journey to one of Laos most awe-inspiring attractions, the Kong Lor cave.
Kong Lor is a very small village with two guesthouses, one restaurant and approximately 50 locals. However, 1km beyond the village leads to a 7.5km cave which in places is 100m high. A river flows all the way through it making it necessary to charter a longboat to explore the cave. To our dismay and with bit being rainy season we had a night of torrential rains and storms making it impossible to enter the cave the next morning due to he height and ferocity of the river. Out of the 12 'falangs' (foreigners) in the village we were the only
5 who decided to stay one more day in the hope of being able to enter this infamous cave the following morning.
Luck was on our side as we awoke early the next day to be told that the cave was open. We rushed to the river and chartered ourselves a boat and finally entered the Kong Lor cave. It truly was majestic and jaw-dropping as we travelled up the river and through the cave which led to a village on the other side. The trip lasted 3 hours and in order not to waste another day we rushed to catch a minibus which was to drop us at a junction so we could catch another bus to take us to Pakse.
14 hours later, and at 4am we arrived in Pakse. Fortunately we were abe to find some accomodation and get some much needed sleep before a day-trip to the Bolaven Plateu. This was an area situated approximately 1500m above sea level where coffee and tea is grown and also offers some of the largest waterfalls we had ever seen. We spent the afternoon swimming at the top of the waterfall and enjoying a much needed
cool off.
We quickly moved on to the Four Thousand Islands which were a nice relaxing spot but also gave us the chance to cycle round one of the islands in the hope of seeing the rare Irrawady dolphins. Unfortunately we failed and still hope to see them in Kratie, Cambodia.
This wrapped up our visit to Laos and so we headed to our fourth country of our epic adventure, Cambodia.
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