Travels:Laos. Caving in Vang Vieng

Vang Vieng
Day 5
Wednesday, 24 December, 08.

Today, we wanted to discover a little bit more of this beautiful town, so we thought it would be good to do a bit of caving today. And that's one of the things you can do in this town. Vang Vieng is surrounded by limestone caves, and almost all of them have been discovered and have become a tourist attraction.

We had to get to 'the other side', so we had to cross a bridge. This is Laos, as nothing is for free. We had to pay 4,000 Kip each to cross the bridge and back!! We passed through villages and paddy fields and it was a very hot day. It is not the season for rice, as the fields were an ugly brown. But I reckon it to be a beautiful scenery when there is rice planted and of course during harvesting when the rice turns yellow.

It was ages before we reached the Tiger Cave, and yeah, it's 10,000 Kip for entrance, with torch lights provided!! The cave was small, we only managed to get in one of the small chambers, and we had to squeeze through a very tight, small and narrow hole. Imagine my poor 6' 7" husband trying to fit into the hole!! J managed anyway but to go further meant more tight squeezes for him. So we went out, got in through another entrance which was even smaller!! I had to get down on all fours and crawled my way in!! In that process, I slightly twisted my left knee, and so we aborted going any further. Not that we could anyway, the cave was too small for J! I think J was extremely frustrated, though I was happy to turn back and head home!

Back in town, we had tuna sandwich on a lovely baguette. I tell you, they make awesome sandwiches here, and they're simple sandwiches too!! Then back to the hotel for a siesta.

Tonight was another cold night. For dinner, we decided to try something exclusively Lao - the Lab (meat salad). We ordered the beef lab, tomyam and I had sour fish soup, which was da bomb!! Awesome food!!

Nam Song-how can anyone not love waking up to this view?!

This is life in Vang Vieng - forget taking the bridge, just drive through the river!

xoxo,