Right, enough of living the good life of suptuous French/Lao fusion cusine and sprawling in our bargain boutique guest house. It was high time to go exploring and lose some of those pesky surplus calories that had hitched a ride.
After grabbing a couple of bikes and quizzing the local travel agent, we headed for one of the many picturesque waterfalls that adorns the countryside around Luang Prabang. After slogging it out uphill for 90 minutes along narrow dirt roads on a crappy single gear dunger of a bike we arrived at our destination. Unfortunately, despite our travel agent friend's sound assurances that there would be heaps of the wet stuff, I reckon I could do a vastly more impressive effort after a few Tui's (a great NZ brew for all the non-kiwis). All was not lost however as we discovered a dam complete with two flying foxes and a group of kamakase 7 year olds, who were only too eager to pull you back in after a high speed splashdown. The trip home was bliss too and we were home in 15 minutes as it was all down hill.
The 7 hour winding drive to our next destination, Vang Vieng, took us through rural bamboo villages from which enthusastic kids came running to sell swags of plump jungle rats to the passing traffic. Vang Vieng itself is a lot like our old stomping ground of Invers,in that the town itself isn't up to much, but it is blessed with fantastic surroundings. We were straight into it.
First stop was the organic mulberry farm for a night (top notch mulberry shakes and pancakes) before, despite our first rainy day in over two months, heading out to the Tham Sang, Tham Hoi, Tham Loup and Tham Nam caves. A more accurate description would be: cave with a buddha and a stalagmite that might look like an elephant if you were on acid, cave with a buddha and musical stalactites; cave with a buddha and a buddha footprint, cave with NO buddha but you tube through it! Compared to NZ where touching the formations in the cave is sacriledge, here anything goes as was demonstrated with the musical stalactites. Here our guide grabbed the nearest stone off the floor and proceeded to pound the adjacent limestone while we all looked on dumbstruck. With this kind of attention, not suprisingly, the stalactites in many of the caves are looking decidely worse for wear with bits missing all over the show.
Next was the obligatory tubing trip down the Nam Song back to Vang Vieng. We decided on kayaks as we wanted to back in time for the rocket festival, but still had a great time espcially launching ourselves off into the river from a massive elasticated rope swing... heart in your mouth good times!
The Rocket Festival involves the two pillars of any good university flat warming: booze and fire. All the locals DIY their own skyrockets, get together for a pissup and fire off their creations in the hope of making the clouds rain for a good rice crop. Rocket making skills varied with some sailing over the horizon, some making everyone run for cover as they plummeted back to earth from a vertical trajectory and some did an Arian and detonated on the launch pad!
The next day we followed the successful rockets over the horizon on mountainbikes. The Cave of The Golden Crab was our destination, and if Vang Vieng was Gothom City, Bruce Wayne would be setup in this joint. Needless to say it had a resident Buddha, but sadly no golden crabs, however it was by far the most impressive cave, and being a bit harder to get to, wasn't anywhere near as damaged as the previous ones.
The rest of the ride took us over the dodgiest bridge I've ever had the guts to cross, and along some logging roads through "hill tribe"(they live and farm rice on the flat here) villages. One of the locals was out with her loom whipping up a skirt that we were told would take over four months to complete! Being on a logging road, we were passed by several trucks carting out massive, gunbarrel-straight logs that no doubt were harvested totally legitimately and sustainably... yeah right!
