Caving and kayaking

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We had a relatively relaxed start to the day since the tour operator had arranged to pick us up from our hostel and there was a small café serving a reasonable breakfast directly across the road, thus saving us a bit of time.

We got on a sawng-thaew with about 15 other people and drove out of town to one of the nearby cliffs. A small river flowed out from a cave mouth under the cliff face. We had to wait for a while once we got there for the group in front to come back out, during which time I had a conversation with one of the tour guides who wanted my help working out how to operate his new digital camera… you may have guessed where this is going... and I was rather surprised to see it was a similar but earlier model to my own. I helped the guy work out the functions all the while wondering how an assistant tour guide in Laos had managed to acquire an expensive and unusual digital camera. I wasn’t particularly surprised when he asked me how much my camera was worth, but I don’t think there was any way to prove he had nicked it.

Once the first group had come out of the cave we got on to our tubes and pulled ourselves along a rope in to the cold water. It took about 20 minutes to pull or paddle our way to the end of the cave and then come back, with our torches flickering across the weird rock formations on the ceiling as we went.

We had lunch at a nearby hut after emerging back into daylight, and then visited another cave - dry this time - before driving back towards town to get into our kayaks. The river here was a bit calmer than the one near Luang Prabang, but we still had a few close scrapes with bushes and rocks. About half way along we came to a very noisy area with bars lining the side of the river and hundreds of western tourists jumping off rope swings, drinking or dancing or tubing around. We stopped here for a bit and Sammy tried out the rope swing before we continued down the river. There were more bars and I think some of the other members of the group may have stopped, but we carried on. The tour guides caught up with us as we neared Vang Vieng - looking slightly tired as if they had been paddling like mad to catch up - and suggested we must be very strong to paddle so fast. Oops.

We rested at the hotel for most of the rest of the afternoon and had dinner at one of the river side restaurants before booking some rock climbing for the morning.

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Comments

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expert
Well with all this kayaking you are doing its looks like you will be an expert by the time you come back; the Humber should be no problem!! Certainly sounds like you are having a great time, we are quite keen on Tai food so maybe you can get some authentic recipes?