Travels

This past weekend, Friday and Saturday classes were cancelled at Vientiane College, giving us a “mini mid-term break”. We took advantage of the break to load the whole crew into a van for a weekend trip to Vang Vieng.

Vang Vieng is some 165 km north of Vientiane on Route 13, and is sort of the Lao version of Banff. The biggest industry is tourism, and the place is filled with guesthouses, restaurants, internet cafés, tour operators, and falangs.

The town’s backdrop, and its main draw, is an archetypically beautiful limestone karst terrain which is shrouded in jungle and mist, and riddled with tunnels and caves said to be inhabited by all manner of spirits. Running through town is the Nam Song River which, at the height of the tourist season, is filled with swimmers, kayakers, and people just lazing the day away floating along in inner tubes. At various points along the river enterprising locals have set up rest areas, snack bars, and rustic restaurants where hungry or thirsty visitors can get a snack and a Beer Lao.

Karst Cliffs along the Nam Song.

In the evenings, many of the visitors head for one of the TV restaurants that line Vang Vieng’s main street. There they recline, Lao style, eat dinner and watch video reruns of Friends or The Simpsons while sipping cold beer. It really is strange (and a little depressing) to see people who are literally halfway around the world from home sitting slack-jawed and staring at American sitcoms. But, as a restaurant owner and friend of Sivone’s said, “If I turn it off, the people won’t come.”

We left Vientiane about 2:00 on Friday afternoon, and arrived in Vang Vieng around 4:30. By “we”, I mean Sivone, Vanh, Nin, Kesone, Peter, Moui, Boui, the driver, Cathy and me.

Part way along, we stopped at the village of Hin Hoep where a bridge crosses the Nam Lik River. Sivone explained the significance of the bridge during the Indochina War. Apparently the Pathet Lao captured and held the bridge, preventing the US-backed Royal Lao Government from sending troops towards Luang Prabang and northern Lao. The Americans responded by building an airstrip at Vang Vieng (Lima Site 27), leapfrogging over the Pathet Lao, and then fighting them from the rear. The Pathet Lao managed to hang on, however, and the bridge became the dividing line between the government forces and the communist rebels. In the end, the Pathet Lao prevailed.

It rained heavily on Friday night, and was still raining on Saturday morning when we got up. But, as we ate our breakfast of mulberry pancakes washed down with thick black Lao coffee, the rain slowed down to more of a drizzle. Unlike at home, in Lao it’s still warm when it rains, and we decided to go on a kayaking trip down the Nam Song.

We selected a local guiding company, and the kayaks were soon loaded on the top of a small truck. Everyone except Sivone and Vanh piled into the back for the 10 kilometres or so to the put-in spot.

While the lifejackets and helmets were pretty much “one-size-fits-all”, we swapped them around until both Peter and I had stuff that more or less fit. The instruction consisted of a two-minute lecture, first in English then in Lao, about how to paddle, and then we were off.

Jump.

Ready for the Kayak trip.

As it was the beginning of the rainy season, and with the overnight rain, the river was gaining strength. There were some riffles and small rapids, as well as a few places where rocks, midstream bushes, and sweepers made the going a little tricky.

The kayaks were an assortment of well-used one to three person plastic boats. Cathy had her own kayak, Boui and I were assigned to the two-person model, while each of the other two kayaks held a guide and two passengers.

For some reason, Boui and I had trouble coordinating our actions, and we were constantly working at cross-purposes to one another. We hadn’t gotten very far down the river before we went sideways into a now-partially-submerged stand of brush and dumped our kayak. The current was surprisingly strong as we held onto the overturned boat and bumped our way down the river for a few hundred feet until we could get ourselves stopped with the assistance of one of the guides in another kayak.

We dragged the water-filled kayak to shore and drained the water out, then got in and floated down to where the others had stopped. The guide rearranged us, and I ended up with the single kayak. For me at any rate, the rest of the float was considerably easier.

We floated and paddled for a couple of hours. The banks were cleared in some areas, while along other stretches the trees came right down to the water. For a couple of kilometres, the river hugged the base of several towering jungle-covered karst cliffs that soared up into the mist. It was a magical place.

By 1:30, we were back in town. We went for a late lunch and then headed to Tham Phu Kham—the cave of the reclining Buddha.

To get to the cave, we had to travel 7 or 8 kilometres up a lovely limestone karst valley. Sivone rounded up a “taxi” for us—a homemade wooden wagon pulled by a kind of hand tractor that looked a bit like a roto-tiller. We “zoomed” off down the road, bumping and lurching along, and wondering when the whole contraption would break or capsize, throwing us all on the ground in a heap of bruises and broken bones. Somewhat surprisingly, we made it to the end of the road without mishap.

The cave entrance was about 100 metres up the mountainside. The straightforward climb we’d expected soon turned into a slippery, slimy, near vertical scramble. In a couple of places, “helpful” bamboo handrails had been installed. On closer inspection, however, we could see that the rails were either not connected to the rock at all, or were connected with little bits of plastic twine. The handrails seemed designed to give you a false sense of security and then to fail cruelly if you actually used them.

The cave itself wasn’t much better as it was wet, slippery, and dangerous. We gingerly made our way to the Buddha, but didn’t venture any further. It was no place to break an arm or a leg.

No one was looking forward to making their way back down. It would have been easier and safer to rappel the route, but we down-climbed carefully and, luckily, without incident.

Obviously we were not in a place where the terms “liability issues” or “lawsuit” are normal parts of the vocabulary.

Once we were safely back on level ground, Cathy, the “girls”, and Peter went swimming in the local swimming hole. They all hooted and hollered and swung, Tarzan-like, from ropes suspended from an overhanging tree. Muoi, Buoi, and Nin all worked up the nerve to jump the ten feet from an overhead branch into the pool below.

The next morning we planned to visit Tham Jang cave and, after our experience the day before, we all wore solid shoes, and Cathy brought a complete first aid kit. We were surprised and relieved to find a staircase of, Nin tells us, 147 steps leading to the cave’s entrance. Inside were concrete walkways and electric lights.

The Pathet Lao used the cave to escape American bombing during the Indochina war, but it was unclear how much of the works in the cave were leftover from the war, and how much had been built more recently for tourists.

The cave itself was quite wonderful with its stalactites, stalagmites, pools, and weird calcite stone formations (not to mention the 10° drop in temperature when you went inside—aaahhhh). The local guide had a story to tell about most every feature, but it was hard to tell if these were traditional stories, or if they had been made up recently to tell the tourists.

A swift, cool stream emerged from a cave at the foot of the mountain, and Peter, the “girls”, and Cathy once again decided to go for a swim. It was a challenge trying to swim upstream against the current and into the cave. Even strong swimmers found it tough going—they had to swim hard just to stay in one place.

Gollum deciding what (who?) to have for lunch.

As it had been at least two hours since we’d last eaten, it was decided that we should have lunch in an open-air restaurant before heading for home. Every few minutes a hungry cow would try to sneak in for a bite. They seemed a bit put out when we shooed them away.

Sivone chuckled as he described this as an “adventure tour” weekend. There certainly were a number of times when disasters both small and large could have struck, but we’d been lucky, and we’d enjoyed every minute of it. (I haven’t even talked about the hair-raising van trip between Vientiane and Vang Vieng. We roared down the road, narrowly missing small children, parked cars, cows and pedestrians, while darting in and out of our lane to pass overloaded trucks and belching diesel buses. The motorcyclists seemed nonplussed as we passed them with mere inches to spare. Eighty km/hr in 30 zones seemed to be the accepted speed. Astonishingly, except for Cathy and me, everyone fell asleep. We sat wide-eyed, and occasionally breathless. The driver took calls on his cell phone.)