Advertisement
Published: April 23rd 2008
Edit Blog Post
This morning I grabbed breakfast at the "Mulberry Organic Cafe". The breakfast menu clearly catered to westerners, but the reason I went was to try their mulberry shake and mulberry pancakes. Mulberry items are quite popular in this region of the world (or at least for the tourists) because the bushes are grown to feed the silkworms. Both the shake and the pancake were excellent.
I then met up with Adam, my climbing guide, and the 'other guy' whom he said was of the same climbing level of me. Well, 'the guy' was a chunky dutch girl who was on her third day of the three-day climbing course. We waited for a third guy, who ended up being another dutch man jsut a little older than me, and in decent shape...but with no climbing experience.
We hopped in a miniature truck converted to be a tuk-tuk, with a roof over the pickup bed and bench seats. We drove out of town to the bank of a river, where we hopped in a wooden boat and our guide pushed us across the river with a bamboo pole. About 100 yards from the river we found ourselves at 'sleeping cave'. The
'sleeping cave' is not actually a cave, as I had hoped, but rather a corridor. Almost a cave, but no roof. What was cave-like, though, was the stone. All of the cliffs and mountains surrounding Vang Vieng are limestone, so even though we weren't in a cave, the stone we were climbing on felt like a cave wall - and looked it too. The rock on the wall was buttery smooth, but there were nice large handholds formed from stalactite-like formations.
We spent the first half of the day climbing 5.6 and 5.7 rated climbs (very easy climbs). The climbs were fun, but also frustrating because I wanted to push myself on harder climbs, but the people I was with were still learning how to tie into the rope.
We took a break at noon, and were served baguettes with chicken. We ate at a bar on stilts at the water's edge where tubers drop by for a drink. I finished my sandwich and was ready to go tackle some harder climbs, but our guide told us we were to take a half-hour break. Break? I thought we just took a break by eating lunch! I told him
I wanted to climb, but he told me I would get too sleepy if I climbed right after eating. Bullshit. I played a round of pool with the dutch guy, and some 'Lao soccer' with our guide. Lao soccer is like hacky sack but with a hollow ball about 4 inches in diamete. It was cool to learn their favorite game, but I was horrible at it, and I paid to go climbing!
We went back to the 'sleeping cave' where we did some miserably easy climbs, but at least this time I got to lead. (Leading is where you're the guy going up with the rope and clipping in). Since I was leading routes now, and everyone had learned to belay, our guide decided he didn't really have to do anything, and spent the rest of our time in 'sleeping cave' banging sticks together. I guess that's the Lao way?
Finally, at the end of the day, our guide took us to a different wall, 'sleeping wall'. This wall was ridiculously cool looking. It was undercut, with giant limestone stalactites hanging down. The guide led a route for us, and told me it was rated a 5.9
(something I should be able to climb), but when I hopped on, it was wayy harder than a 5.9 - more like a 5.11. I made it up the climb, but only after pulling myself up past the crux of the climb. Bummer! Well, at least I wasn't shown up by either of the other two - they each made it up five feet.
Our climbing finished at 4:00 - earlier than I expected, and we went back to the bar to wait for the boat to be paddled across the river. In the mean time, I checked out the rope swing. Next to the bar the owner built a giant rope swing with a platform about 20 feet high. Verry fun. Luckily the water was deep enough, even in the dry season.
A tuk-tuk brought us back into town, and I stopped at a roadside stand for a late lunch of vegetarian yellow curry. Yum!
I dropped by my guesthouse to change out of my wet clothes, and had to take off my sandals before I entered the hallway. This is typical throughout Southeast Asia, and even in some restaurants you are expected to leave your
shoes at the entrance. However, when I finished changing and came back outside, my left sandal was missing. Who steals a sandal? It's 9:40, and I'm still walking around with only one sandal. Very weird.
Anyways, I decided to try a Lao iced coffee to wake me up a little before dinner. Veitnamese iced coffe is better - Lao iced coffees are larger, but sweeter and more watery. The interesting part of this story is that the electricity randomly gave out, and the entire town went pitch black for 10 minutes. It sounds like this is a common occurance.
For dinner I went back to the food stalls (they're cheaper and have a better atmosphere than the restaurants playing re-runs of friends, Hollywood movies, or loud American music). My dinner fried red curry was amazing, and I for dessert I ordered sweet sticky rice with coconut milk and fresh mango - wonderful.
Well, tonight, if I can finish catching up on my blogs, I will go over to Dong Kan island and check out the party scene. But, I can't be out too late because tomorrow I'm going to go explore a cave in the morning, and
then tube down the river!
Advertisement
Tot: 0.067s; Tpl: 0.015s; cc: 5; qc: 44; dbt: 0.0413s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.1mb
alina
non-member comment
ahh!
its so amazing to read all of your enteries!...it seems like youre having a blast...id be so exhausted if i were you at this point...glad to see that you havent gotten too sick yet...hope all is well and looking forward to reading more!