Old Man Buffalo loves Old Man River, a love-in in Laos


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Asia » Laos » South » Si Phan Don
August 14th 2007
Published: April 18th 2008
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An Internet cafe chewed up and spat out my photo CD containing pictures of our amazing South Laos adventure from Vientiane to Kong Lor cave and Ban Natan village in central Laos. Which is a shame, because the place was amazing. We went through Green Discovery which gives proceeds back to the communities who take part and aim to use as many different local organisations as possible to spread the wealth. It was just Nilam and I and our guide, the equipment (kayaks, mountain bikes) was loaded onto a jeep and we were driven to the local bus station. We then had to get all of this onto a local bus already packed with furniture, sacks of food and the like. In the pouring rain. We unloaded in the village of Ban Na Hin, where we stayed in a family run guesthouse with a French couple and ate dinner communally. The french guy then bought a bottle of home made Lao Lao whiskey in a handmade glass bottle. I could barely stand the fumes. But he kept insisting.

Next morning we cycled to the village for lunch (baguettes) and then to the base of a mountain, through magical swarms of tiny yellow butterflies. We walked the rest of the way, to the base of the Nasanam waterfall. This place is littered with waterfalls, thin, wispy, giant things pouring off the limestone karsts of the mountain ranges, exposed for a moment as they are flung off the cliff edge high above before thundering back into the dense green foliage. We tried to climb to the top of the falls, but it's wet season and there has been landslides which have put huge tree trunks in our way. Instead we wander through the damp Forrest and have lunch on a huge flat rock at the base of the falls, amid the churning, chocolate coloured foaming water. We take the long way back, around the town to the new hydro electric dam and though the villages around it. The villages are lovely, sealed roads, schools, a small medical centre, wooden houses with gardens and lots of livestock on the loose. We're standing on the bridge overlooking the rushing water below when school lets out, all the kids walking home bow to us as they pass. Very strange but they're just being polite, they bow to elders and strangers. I wave back. The whole
The Beginning of the caveThe Beginning of the caveThe Beginning of the cave

Scared silly, say goodbye to sunlight, after this it's just blackness and horror (in a good way)
area is just spectacular, with the jagged limestone mountains fading into gathering cloud, green rice fields dotted with lonely bamboo shelters, and being out and about on a bicycle just makes the whole experience even better.

The next day we pile the inflatable kayaks onto a tuk tuk and cycle about two beautiful hours along a dusty red road that was straight out of Africa, through villages where we're chased by dogs and shouted at and waved at by kids. We reach a busy little port that transports people and goods up and down the Nam Hinboun river. We load the kayaks onto a long thin boat, and it just about floats. Just. Hold onto the side and your fingers touch the water. These boats are known to capsize easily, scary at first but you have to relax, because the journey takes nearly three hours upstream, and that's a long time to be tense, those life jackets are lifesavers in more ways than one when you're sat on a hard wooden bench for so long. It's a beautiful ride, we pass people fishing, villages on the banks, kids leaping from trees into the river. At one point we pass through a boat racing festival, it seems the entire village is crowded onto the shores to watch, a brightly coloured wooden temple is dressed in coloured flags and everyone is cheering on the teams. Then we reach the last village before the daunting Kong Lor cave. We transfer boats, into a bigger one with a local guide who knows the cave and the rivers twists and turns. Whilst waiting for the guides I take pictures of a couple of local girls fishing with huge nets, their balance is amazing, perched on rocking boats, nets strung tightly between four rattan poles shaped like those old fashioned net covers to keep flies off food, they dip the nets in and heave them out again, leaning back into the tilt of the boat. Occasionally there will be a little fish in the middle of the net, bouncing around, this they place in small stone jars tied to a belt at the waist.

Then comes Kong Lor, it's easy to see why the locals were wary of it for so long and refused to pass into it's dark interior. Quite simply it looks like the entrance to the underworld. Because of the rain
Lonely HouseLonely HouseLonely House

Taken on the bike tour
the rapids that run over the rocks in the cave mouth are at full height and terrifying. They can be navigated in summer by boat but now we have to anchor up on a small sandy bank below the rapids and carry all our stuff over the rocks into the cave where there are numerous wooden boats tied up. Past the rapids the water is glassy smooth and green, the cave roof low and wide, dripping stalactites, disappearing upstream into very black blackness. And we're going on a journey by boat. It really is the River Styx, don't look back. That was pretty much my frame of mind as we set off into the dark, with only the ferryman's head torch to guide us. It was one of the highlights of my trip, huge vaulted caverns, 100m high in places, linked by low round tunnels like abandoned tube lines. There's a limestone ridge that ripples down the roof of the cave entrance which looks like a giant Dragon's backbone. It's unbelievably eerie, I pull the hood up on my jacket, not just because it makes me feel like I'm in Lord of The Rings, but because in certain places it's raining, isolated little patches of heavy rain like those solitary storm clouds that gather over cartoon characters, you can hear them but not see them, the falling water getting louder as you draw towards it. It is the strangest thing, caused by cracks high in the cave ceiling, not wide enough to let a sliver of light through, way deep down below the tree roots, and the rain is seeping through, even though it's not raining outside. And the water is so clear, you can see the massive stone walls reaching down past the cold surface when you shine the torch into the water. I try not to think about the Balrogs and things, my imagination gets the better of me far too often.

Then the boatman pulls up to a stone shore, worn into smooth gulleys by dripping water, the Elesian islands perhaps? Probably not. We head out into the dark, one head torch and my small wind up one to illuminate the way and come to another Cathedral, formed from Stalactites and Stalagmites, a deep shelf in the rock with pulpits and alters and twisting statues, all made of Limestone. The tunnel is about 8km long, it's fair to say I was getting pretty scared about kayaking through it on the way back, but for the moment I was happy as a Clam on a Clam cruise.

We arrived at Ban Natan village a few hours before sundown, we were staying with the Head of the village and his family in an open sided house on ten foot stilts with chickens living underneath, I loved it. They then killed one of the chickens for tea and that was not so great. I was so worried about offending the family too, if they were going through the trouble of preparing chickens, and me being a Vegetarian, but it was okay, the guide explained and while they thought it was pretty funny, they were happy to prepare vegetable only dishes. More Chicken for everyone else.

The house consisted of a huge main room, with a big red open fire at one end for cooking, two bedrooms off to one side and a row of thin mattresses with mosquito nets on the other. Various pots and pans went on the fire, and we got to try famous Laos sticky rice, which is like mortar and tastes great, it gets served up in a big wicker communal urn type thing and you pick out a chunk and roll it into a ball in your hands before eating it, it's rice time fun! After dinner, the light had died completely and the generator was started up especially to power the single light bulb hanging from the cobwebbed rafters (man and spider live harmoniously here, Charlotte would be pleased) and the TV set. There is no signal here so the only thing people watch is karaoke DVDs. The DVDs are brought out especially and the whole family (and anyone who is wandering by) crowds round to watch Laos' favourite male singer, a man in his mid thirties with a fondness for caramel coloured swede, sing about his love for a 13 year old village girl. Bring back Westlife I almost cried. Karaoke DVDs are huge here, sold strung up like shiny new-caught fish, right next to the essentials like bread and pink eggs. If you need the toilet in the night, it's in the middle of the village, reserved only for visitors. Bring a torch and something hefty for whacking the giant spiders and beasties which snuffle at you from the darkness.

And then comes the Kayaking into the cave of death, I stressed out majorly and drove Nilam nuts, but I had never been as scared of anything in my whole life, just beaing able to hear the rapids in the future darkness was enough to make me picture getting swept off the boat and sucked down into some underground plughole. And it didn't help that our headlamps were dying, giving off a sickly yellow glow that only served to make the caves look like the inside of Edgar-Allen Poe's mind, and then it all went Pete Tong when the light went out and we stated to get swept backwards, away from our guide in another kayak, backwards along the rocks (in an inflatable kayak) into a whirlpool OF DEATH. Okay, the last bit is probably not true, although we didn't find out what was pulling us backward as I grabbed onto one of the protruding stonebergs like a limpet. But overall it was the most horrifying and rewarding thing I've done for a long long time, maybe ever, I was so scared but I got on with it (albeit with much vocalisation) mosquitoes flying into the head lamp
Hades?Hades?Hades?

Deep in the cave
light and eyes, and the ever present roar of the rapids. At one point we were driven aground onto a shallow shelf of pebbles, we had to get out of the kayak and drag it back to the main river flow, that was so strange and so brilliant (not least because I was on land again) standing ankle deep in this underground river, all of our head torches scanning the darkness like lighthouses, glinting off the pebbles and the water and being sucked up by the extra thick blackness that lives in the roof of the big caves.

And then it arrived, the rapids at the caves end, we went slamming into an upturned waterfall and I could see myself bouncing up and out into the rapids like a trampolene of doom. I thought, rather unnecessarily, that I would surely die, the rapids that I'd escaped in Vang Vien were back to claim me like in Final Destination. But I still hung onto the inflatable kayak (sensible) and the giant paddle (not so sensible) because I thought what a hassle it would be, should I make it out alive, to have to chase after these items down river. These were my (potential) dying thoughts people. Rubbish. When my head was above water briefly before being plunged back in I was looking around for Nilam (made more difficult because I had lost a contact lens) but I saw her and stuck the paddle out for her to grab onto, trying to save her life. She didn't grab it, she wasn't even fussed, she was as happy as an apple, bobbing away like it was a ride in a Disney water park. Then it was over and we climbed back into the raft (which thankfully I HAD rescued!) and one eye down, paddled back to the village. So I may have overreacted, but it was a near death experience at the time, even if in hindsight it was not so much near death, as poking at death with a very long stick, just to see if I could annoy him. I couldn't, he wasn't bothered. He was busy elsewhere, polishing his scythe or something.

We were dropped off on the road to Thakhek. Another fun Laos bus ride where we sat on plastic stools in the aisle and arrived and the last French outpost of Savanaket, I don't know if
Best Window EVERBest Window EVERBest Window EVER

Someone's gone 'I know what will make this room much nicer, I'll open the window, let a bit of air in.'
it really was, but it felt like it, staying in a crumbling high ceilinged colonial manor house. Looking at the world's biggest thighbones in the world's smallest Dinosaur museum. You can see Thailand across the Mekong, get a ferry back to 7-11's, chocolate (it had been awhile) and Pad Thai, but we're not done with Laos yet. We meet the loveliest woman in Mama'a cafe, she helps us out no end, and even waits for us for two hours by the side of the road at 12am to tell the bus driver where we need to go. And we're off, snuggled in amoungst the onion bags and rice sacks which have become surprisingly comfy pillows, they sort of mould to your head and neck, genius. We'd paid the bus driver who, when we got to the bus station, found and paid the onward tuk tuk driver taking us to the port to get to Si Phan Don, the 4,000 islands at the southern most point of Laos. We were the only westerners on the hour long tuk tuk ride, and every time we stopped to load or unload passengers, we were bombarded with food on sticks - whole Picasso chickens,
a Mini Mekonga Mini Mekonga Mini Mekong

They branch off all over the place
flattened between two metal grills and BBQ'd until they resembled one of his paintings, other unidentifiable things were served up on sticks, or wrapped in Banana leaves. There was a veggie snack too which was lovely, Laos sticky rice, packed into large hollow Bamboo shoots and cooked over a low fire. It has a subtle flavour and you peel back the softened bamboo like an oak banana and eat the rice right out the tube, the perfect travel snack because it doesn't bruise in your bag.

And then we saw the Mekong, much much bigger here than in Luang Prebang, resembling more a brown sea than a river. Over on the other bank was Cambodia and in between were 4,000 islands varying in size, in places you can't even see the far bank. To give you an idea of the vastness of this freshwater wonderland, the French built a railway (including a stone bridge) linking the largest islands. I've never seen a bigger river in my life and it's stunning, each time I think I've seen the most beautiful landscape possible, Laos keeps right on giving. We stay on Don Det, known as a bit of a Vang Vien of the south, but it's nothing like that when we arrive, there is one main street were the majority of restaurants and bars are, but as it's off season everything is quiet and the electricity runs only from 7pm until 7am. It's quicker to send a pigeon than an Email, and the accommodation is basic to say the least, not so much a shower as a tap and bucket. But who needs that when you have a hut for 20,000 Kip a night (that's 1 pound 16 pence) with Hammocks on a balcony over the water? And the island is beautiful, the perfect place to cycle around (although I was low on cash and there are no ATM's on the islands so no cycling for me). I go walking through the water lilly fields, along shady single track roads that ring the island, bordered by the steady roar of the Mekong on one side and green green green on the other, Buffalo wander peacefully, coconut trees grow those delicious nuts of coco goodness, the sun shines, rice rustles in the light breeze and butterflies get on with whatever butterflies evolved to do, taunt us with their awesomeness probably. I forgot
BuffalooooooBuffalooooooBuffaloooooo

With rider
to say that I've never seen so many butterflies anywhere as I have in Laos, they are gorgeous and they are everywhere.

The Mekong is at it's highest this time of year, so there's probably only 3,000 instead of 4,000 islands and some are so small they are less like islands, more like tree covered stepping stones, the slightly larger are inhabited by a few grazing Water Buffalo, I'm still not sure how they get them over there, unless they were taken over in dry season and are now stranded, although they are probably called Water Buffalo for a reason.

We wandered over the french railway bridge to Don Kong (the slightly more upmarket island for the flash packers) the river is raging and a huge oak tree in the middle of the water is half submerged. It's getting pretty hot, so Nilam and I stop off for a coconut shake in a wooden restaurant overlooking the river (I should stop saying that, everywhere here overlooks part of the river, it fans out like a delta, only it has two more countries to go through before it even meets the sea! We were making our way, like mad dogs, through the mid-day sun to the smaller of Si Phan Don's waterfalls, past idyllic monasteries and rice fields, along white sand tracks in the shadowless and glaring mid afternoon. But it was all worth it when we reached the cool tree cover and spray of the waterfalls, over little wooden Japanese style bridges, past pools and sedate offshoots of the river you could hear raging against rock in the distance. More water buffalo, I love these guys, they make me laugh, their expressions are priceless, when they lift their heads in my direction their down turned mouths make them look like Monty Python drawings of angry old men, they make me chuckle every time, those crazy cows. Especially the pink ones.

The waterfall itself was not so much a fall as a repeated smashing of water on rock over a large slope, but there is just so much water it's pretty impressive. we decide to pay to see the Big waterfall the next day, which is a few islands over by boat and tuk tuk. Now THAT is a big waterslope! Imagine tubing in that! You'd be tenderised. And you can climb down onto the rocks right next to it, amazing. The river has risen so much it's taking over the land, pouring through the branches.

Our time in Laos was coming to an end, we were seriously running out of money and so our last few thousand Kip were spent on a bus ticket to take us back to Bangkok and back to the civilization of 24 hour 7-11's, Ping Pong shows and 36p Pad Thai. I was gutted (not about the Pad Thai....or the Ping Pong shows) but it was either that or swim for it. Laos gave us a lovely send off however, with the most spectacular sunset I'd had seen in my life. We sat on the banks of the Mekong for the last time, it had been with us for three countries, and now the waters were turned purple and gold in farewell. Ha. This place doesn't half make you sentimental.


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18th April 2008

Beautiful South!!
Ah! Looks amazing! I wish I made it south with you guys!

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