|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Day 08 - Thursday, Oct 30, 2003
Vang Vieng
| Slept till 10. The D's left a note under C and R's door and went to breakfast at End of the World, but after a plate of yellow noodles with tofu and 2 coffee-banana shakes (and C and R showed up around the time our food did), Dodo was falling asleep at the table, so she went back and slept for 3 more hours, and spent another lovely interlude reading on the hotel terrace. |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
| Claire, Ruth and Dan went walking in search of Pha Pouak cave. More walking through rice fields to a smaller, closer, greener karst. Had to wade through mud the final few yards. Met three 21st century "hippies" passing a bowl in the woods at the foot of the karst. Followed a path up a short ways to a locked, barbed-wire and bamboo gate. Could see the opening of the cave beyond it, but no way in. |
| Followed a path around the north side of the karst and eventually reached another local cave guide. He convinced us to go with him to Lusy cave. On the way, Ruth's foot went through an old rotted bamboo bridge across a stream and she got a nasty scrape on her calf. She insisted she was fine and we trekked on. Much more wooded and jungly than our walk to Ang Nguen. |
| Lusy cave was enormous, many times the size of Ang Ngeun 2. Claire and Dan had flashlights but Ruth didn't, so our guide lent her his, helping her to strap on the battery pack and copping a quick feel as he did so. He then rushed us through the cave, pointing out the different formations and telling us what they supposedly looked like. Each time he'd stop and say "big cave, very beautiful, OK, number one, Beerlao!" and then "OK let's go," soon followed by "slowly, slippery." He had us try to guess the obscenely shaped formations ("pussy!" which none of us got, and penis, which Dan guessed, having caught on to the game.) We only saw a fraction of the cave, maybe 15 to 20 minutes total underground, although we did walk at a fairly quick pace. |
| On the walk back our guide pointed out a net strung in the trees to catch birds which Dan initially took to be an enormous spider web. Further along he picked several small fruits from a tree and handed us each one. He took a big bite out of his so we each took tentative bites but had to spit it out. Very bitter, something a bit like a crab apple. "He's taken the ripe one for himself," said Claire. |
| He accompanied us all the way back to the bamboo bridge where we bought him a Beerlao (assuming he'd been hinting at it all through the cave), although we were all too parched to drink anything but water and 7up. |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
| Found Dodo reading on the guesthouse terrace around 3:30. |
| We all walked to the north end of town (quick wat pix) but the locals-oriented restaurant in the Rough Guide didn't seem to exist so we walked down through the market and out to the café on the little island. The market: heaps of veggies, bright purple eggplants, red chili peppers, soft masses of green riverweed... Interspersed with the veggies (sometimes lying beside them on the same piece of tarp) were animals, many of them alive and bound up - lizards with their hands tied; bats and birds twitching; ducks thrusting their bills out of wicker cages; fish either lying dead on the tarps or swimming around in plastic tubs. Dead squirrels, long and slender with brown fur and tails. One big bristling haunch of hog. Chickens, chicks, eggs, chicken fetuses being eaten right out of the eggshells; barbecued songbirds. Dodo lost her appetite for fish and ordered deep-fried green beans at the island café, where we sat at a picnic table under massive stands of bamboo and listened to horrible pop music while Bob Marley music played faintly in the distance. Then we chased the setting sun with our cameras. It still showed 2 black sunspots on its red surface, like from Vientiane, though not in the same place. |
| Back into town - showers - drinks at Xayoh. Dodo started feeling crappy (backache/indigestiony/PMS) and the organic farm restaurant was closed so we went to Nazim - just as yummy as their Vientiane restaurant - for mint naan, chickpea masala, rice, spiced black tea. Dodo felt a bit better, then it was 10:00. Dodo got the room key from Dan and went back to crash. Dan and Claire stayed up drinking Beerlao and chatting. |