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Published: June 25th 2009
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So off we go on a 4.30am tuk tuk to the out od town bus station to get the local 5am bus to somewhere in the middle of nowhere to get a tuk tuk to some little village in the middle of even more nowhere!!
The bus was actually fine , clean and had reclining seats and air con (at times!!) and we got charged the local rate!!
However the scenery was something new all the jungle gave way to fierce looking karst mountains, totally different and worth battling with the eyelids for!!!!
The only thing that happened on this trip was that Dan tried some manky old pork floss sausages and I tied these weird giant rice cakes that were neither sweet nor salty and had somekind of sweet bean dressing. i've had better!!!
Anyway the usualy story get to village and get into tuk tuk right? Wrong. Tuk tuk guy decides he has a timetable and that means he doesn;t leave till 1pm. We go up at 4am and go there by 10.30am, we need to get on with it. After much tug of war over price and estimated time of departure our bags were
slung on and the guy went for his lunch with us assured that we will be off by 11am (all smiles)
He is drinking alcohol with his lunch. We are roasting in the tuk tuk.
11am comes and goes, we are not going at 11am. He comes over eventaully, laughing (hillarious isn't it?!)still saying 11am, OK so he doesn't actuallu know what 11am is or means, great. So we try again and we think we are off, whoop whoop!! But then we end up parked at the bus stop and that is where we stayed until after 12pm.
After loading eggs(by the crateload) people, beer Lao, flip flops, tvs, matresses, sattelite dishes we were ev entually off.
1.5hrs later we were the only people in the tuk tuk and were in the real countryside surrounded by the mountains, strange low lying clouds which you could touch, paddies fields a few houses and not much else(apart from rain and mud!!)
The guy had said homestay and due to his English we didn't hold out much hope, but actually he came up trumps with his neighbour who has 4 small rooms and a toilet to rent with
dinner and breakfast included for 50,000kip each. So off went the bags and we went off to the famous 7km long cave.
Unfortunately the day was turning out to be far more expensive that Dan and i ever imagined it would be and so, when we go fleeced for a toll and then had to get out and walk I felt things were going to go downhill. We walked to the riverside where there were signs about homestays and also the cost of the trip through the cave and also the fact that there is a boat comittee in session.
So the sign said 100,000 kip per boat and then another 5,000 each to enter the cave, the LP said whatever amount is for4 people per boat, well they decided it was totally impossible for 4 of us to get into one boat and then they all started laughing at us when we tried to reason with them. What can you do when people are like that? I frankly for one was happy to cut my losses, i'd already spent too much money and was not in the mood to be cheated after getting up at 4am. For
me the whole experience was ruined from that point on, we had travelled all that way for them to basically rip us off. Eventually and very reluctantly after having a very frustrated cry behind a tree dan got me into my life jacket and headtorch and onto the boat, which was agin rubbish because it was not a slow boat or row boat but this thing with a huge engine on the back and it was raining.
We litterally went across the river and then had to get out and then back into the boats again. We raced through the water so fast at times that I thought my face was going to be left in Laos, so unenjoyable. I couldn't see anything and just felt like someone had left me in a cold wet room and then they would come back occationally to chuck buckets of water over me. After 5 mintues we go told to get out of the boats and I really dodn't want to, I only had really flimsy sponge flip flops on(we had not been given time to unpack our shoes) and then looked at what I was supposed to climb up in near
darkness. It was horrible, dark and just not worth it. The caves are not well lit, ots really dangerous, there isn't actually much to see and I thought I was going on a nice 2.5hr boat ride through some magical and beautiful underworld. Before we knew it we were outside (the best bit) and then we were off the boats and the guys dumped us while they went off for a smoke. I went for a bit of a walk but there was nothing to see and it was all thick with mud and beside didn't I pay for a BOAT RIDE?Over 30minutes later we were back on the boats and storming back through the cave. Just as we approached the exit another group of tourists went past in their boats and ther were at least 6passengers in it!! I was sooooooooooooooooooooo livid, I kust couldn't wait for it to be over. And then to top it off, when they decided that they couldn't be bothered to put the engine back on the second boat all of a sudden it was ok for us 4 and 4 of them to get in the same boat for the final part, pushing
Dan over in the process and me having to stand as they took all the seats. It was horrible and a waste of money and I would tell people just not to bother. The other tour group didn't appear to be western and had obviuosly got 6 people into one boat and we were screwed over by them, awaful, it was the thing I was most looking forward to in Laos. The whole thing including the break took 1hr 15minutes, a total joke and they seemed very happy with themselves.
We went bak to the village and wandered around taking pictures, the village is lovely and people mostly are great. We got to hang out with some of the local kids, but the homestay was not a real homestay as we were not in the house and when we ate they were very kind to lay out a table with great food for us but we didn't get to eat with the family or see any of the prep, the table was actually outside on their terrace. The same thing happened the nest day for breakfast. Although the mother did a Baci ceremony for us which consisted of giving
us each a boiled egg and sticky rice and chanting a type of prayer over each of us to reunite all the fragments of our personaltity(spirits, I forget how many now)and then tying a special while cotton string around our wrists that were are meant to untie, ot cut off in 3 days. Actually it was a bit emnarrassing , we had no idea that the eggs were for this and hadn't eaten for 12 hours so had already started to unpeel our eggs when she walked in on us in horror, whoops, bloody westerners cannot trust us with anything!!
We went to bed shattered and then left on the tuk tuk at 7.30am trying to get to Pakse.........
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