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Published: November 29th 2006
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It all started off the ordinary way...
We had a few drinks and danced into my 21st birthday at Don Chan. Someone had this GREAT idea of telling the DJ about it and he took the chance to keep congratulating me in Lao, playing Happy B*day songs and to sing along via Mic for far too long... (I know they love to fuck up good songs by talking all through them, but singing....)
Well, by the time we left, we have had a great night, a lot of beer and... lost a pair of glasses!
The next morning, Nami just would not congratulate me. She kept talking and talking and I really started to get pissed off! Everyone seemed to ignore me (although I had slipped enough hints for everyone... ) except for Mel, who had already placed presents and a cool card on my desk.
I had accepted my 'fate' when Nami tricked me into her office and when I got out everyone was waiting for me including a cake with candles saying "Happy Birthday BABY Sarah"!?!?
(It turned out Tieng and Nami organised the whole thing and telling everyone except for Mel...)
Nang started playing with the
cake and by the time I left the office I was relieved, happy and had cake in my face!
Shower, packing stuff and off we went to Kong Lo... 10 people in a Toyota Tiger!
We stopped over at Chris's house in Paksan where he showed off its sizzling nightlife...full off Lamvong!
We planned an early start to make it to the Cave on Saturday rather than Sunday. So we would have enough time to hang out on the river afterwards...
Well, great planning!
The smooth 4 lane road wasn't finished, which didn't go with the calculated 100km/h.
We followed an extremely bumpy road through the vally. At one point we had to go back at some point as our car wasn't meant for the river crossing our path.
- We got lost in the rice paddies,
- passed through rivers and mud ditches (with the occasional walk to make sure we get through),
- stopped at villages on the way,
- picked up an Israeli,
- decided to walk and Tim took the car (what were we thinking? There was no reception and we thought we could simply split into two
groups at a point where we were lost and meet again at some point...????? )
Well, we did try to be stupid, but we had to walk back after 5 min to push the car out of the mud, where it had got stuck.
We surrendered and hired a guy from the village to lead the way!
(Funny--> We were complaining about the bruises from the hard and bumpy RIDE and at the same time about our leader who didn't seem to be happy with the 50,000Kip/US$5 we gave him, who we simply left to WALK back into his village!)
Lunch and a boat trip followed, before we got to Sala Kong Lo (the guest house, not the cave!) at around fivish. We had the long-longed for swim, ordered food (they were specifically cooking for us, as there was no one else staying) had good old beerlao and hung out a little. We were too fucked to stay awake and everyone crashed soon after dinner (with an interlude of spoons and MJ!).
It had taken us 2 days to get to the sala and we had one day to make our way through the cave, back to the
car and back to VTE. And we did it... it only took us 15 h.
Our drivers had stayed the night waiting for us and we took off after breakfast (6-7am). We had to exchange boats before the cave as the rights to through the cave belong to a certain village.
The cave is 7,5 km long, pitch black and amazingly huge. We had to get off and walk a few times as the river running through had already lost in height (You can apparently walk trough, in a couple of months!).
We climbed around, waded across, lost shoes and were fascinated by the beauty of the different shapes of stalagmites and stalactites (new clue to remember for the ones who never can, like me: MITES-might fall....top!)
By the time we had picked up our bags, it was obvious that Ami (the Israeli who we made stay with us had got sick). Lucky bastard! Meng drove his bike and he could sit in the car to avoid driving in the sun and on the horrible trails connecting the village to the main road).
Summary:
The landscape was beautiful, the boat trip amazing with the children getting excited
to see felangs (those places still exist!), the sala was basic but really cute, the cave was 'breath-taking', the journey an advanture and our dinner on sunday the best Lao food ever--> too tasty!
It all seems reasonably insane looking back at the time frame, but it was more than worth it.
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