Friday 7th March
I was up at 07.00 after a good nights sleep. It seemed to me that this village – like the others I had stayed in on the previous trek – are almost always active, or there is, at least, some sort of racket coming from somewhere at any given hour of the night or morning. If it's not the farm animals (particularly the almost constant noise of the cock crows), it's the kids running about, screaming and shouting. The children always seem to be on the go, playing together from the early morning. They always seemed to look after themselves, never seeming as over reliant on the parents as would be the case back home. Obviously, people are much more secure in these small, remote villages.
We had breakfast of – you guessed it! - sticky rice and boiled vegetables, friend papaya, and a white potato that was so bland that we were given sugar to dip it in. I ate quite a lot, although more out of a desire not to offend the chief and his wife who had cooked it for us, and less out of a desire to eat more of the same, bland food (not wanting to sound ungrateful, but it was hardly The Ivy!).
We set off for the day shortly after 09.00 and visited another waterfall (Laos specialises in waterfalls and caves!). I skipped a swim in the rock pools due to a lack of a decent volume of water, but it was a nice location just to relax at. After lunch, we were met by a boat that took us to our final destination of Muang Ngoi village (although it is now more like a small town due to the explosion of tourism in recent years).
After sorting out somewhere to stay and saying goodbye to our guide (who had been OK, but not a patch on the guide we had in the first trek), we visited another network of caves and these turned out to be really cool, completely dark and, well, cavernous. It was fun to explore them although we didn't stray too far in (I still have visions of that movie 'Touching the Void' that I saw in Thailand, and didn't fancy disappearing down too many holes!).
We got back to the guesthouse before the sun set and got changed, and I was glad for the opportunity to have a refreshing cold shower. We had a very pleasant dinner by the river, and chatted some more back at the guesthouse before getting some sleep.
