My friends and I have been catching up on all the newest releases. The past few days I've watched Shrek 2, Kill Bill Vol. 1 & 2, Fahrenheit 9/11, Starsky & Hutch, and many others. It's been very lazy, but much needed down time.
However, we did take a great kayaking trip down the Nam Song River. We met about 9am in a downtown restaurant and had breakfast with some other people that were going to join us. Most notably another British couple and two thirty something year old Italian ladies that had just arrived in town.
After breakfast we all piled into a tuk-tuk taxi and drove about 20km north up the riverside. In a large gravel parking lot, we unloaded and got a very brief lesson in how to paddle a kayak. Then, we paired up ( I paired with Enda, an Irish friend) and got into our kayaks. They were really more like fun-yaks than proper kayaks, but it was still fun.
We paddled down river about 30mins splashing and being splashed by our guides before we stopped off at Elephant Cave. It's properly named because there's a strange, natural rock formation that looks exactly like an elephant just inside the shallow cave, but over all it was not interesting to me. Our guide, named Nuan, gave everyone a short history lesson about the cave and how Lao people used it has a hiding place during the war. There was even an old bomb strung up next to the entrance that's now used for a bell to signify lunch and dinner time.
After exploring Elephant Cave for a bit, we walked through a Hmoung Hill tribe village to Water Cave. The entrance to this cave was a small hole in the mountain located in a small lagoon. We each jumped into the lagoon and held on to a rope to work our way inside the cave against the strong current rushing out. The water was cold and there was no light once we entered the cave. Everyone just tried to stay together while we hung onto the rope and slowly inched along deeper into the cave.
About halfway into the cave our guides gave everyone candles to light our way. Several times the water was too shallow and we had to crawl between boulders and under low over hangs, getting extremely muddy in the process and trying our best not to let the candles go out.
We explored the Water Cave for about an hour and then returned to a riverside shack for lunch. Our guides prepared fried rice, beef & veggie kabobs, bananas, and we each got three shots of Lao Tiger Whiskey.
Goofing around outside the water cave
After lunch we paddled for a couple more hours through some small grade 1 and grade 2 rapids and stopped off a two places for jumping into the river. The first place was a wooden scaffold with two make shift diving platforms. The lower platform was about 4m high and the highest platform was about 8m high. Everyone took turns jumping and watching our guides show off by doing flips. A couple guides even dragged their kayaks up and went off while in the kayak. Just good fun.
Once back in town, everyone got cleaned up and gathered at our guides' restaurant for free cocktails. They gave us some strange but sweet concoction made of coke, Tiger Whiskey, and Red Bull. We all sat around drinking and talking about our day's adventure.
That was my most productive day since arriving in Vang Vieng. One other day we did go swimming in a great little blue lagoon at Vang Vieng Resort, but it was raining a little so we didn't stay long before going back to town for more movies.
Swimming lagoon at Vang Vieng Resort
I have to get out of this town before I waste any more time, so the plan is to take a VIP bus to Vientiane tomorrow morning. I've heard Vientiane is not a very exciting place, but it's the best place to catch a bus to Hanoi.
Next stop is Vietnam.
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