5/29 through 6/1: Vang Vieng

5/29: The bus trip from Luang Prabang was supposed to take five hours, but with all the stops it ended up being more like seven. The road wound up over the mountains, then down into the valley, then back up over the mountains . . . It was very beautiful, with karst mountains rising straight up out of the lush green valley, resembling, but not so dramatic as, Guilin in China. Villages line the road, and thus, there are plenty of places to stop to have a smoke, take a piss, eat some soup, or maybe just check out the cool rodents for sale.

Animals for sale to eat at a road side stand

View along the way (it was hard to get a good picture in a moving van). Once again, no complaints from me on travel days in Laos.

Vang Vieng: View of the west side of the river

Vang Vieng - a very strange tourist phenomena. It used to be a little village on a beautiful river surrounded by beautiful karst mountains. And then came tourism out of control. Now, the east side of the river is swarming with hotels, restaurants and bars, which blare their TV's , showing reruns of Friends and Family guy. Even at 8AM, there are TV's on (not quite so blasting), and young Westerners watching. Vang Vieng has become a party town. There is the Australian pub right next to the Irish pub, competing over who has the better fish and chips. .

I am staying on the west side of the river, where there is still hardly any development. I have a little bungalow in a sweet garden. It is owned by a cynical Irishman, who I have had a couple of long conversations with, though I have a hard time with cynical people. I am really not that interested in spending my energy that way.

Vang Vieng: river, west side, and free bridge (there's a nicer pay bridge, but I won't use that)

Boats at sunset

View of some of the development on the east side of the river.

I had never seen light brown water buffaloes before

Free bridge again

I went for a walk, looking for Tiger Head cave. I never found it, but saw some beautiful scenery.

A little bit of "over-fishing" this stream

Fisher woman

5/31: all day tour caving and kayaking. It was supposed to be a group of 16 people, but only three of us showed up. The rest were out drinking too late last night.

Village laundry - we first went to this little village, where we visited elephant cave

The cave is used as a Buddhist site of worship. This bell, made out of a US bomb, is wrung by the monks three times a day. Though the sight of it is pretty depressing, it makes a pretty nice sound.

We then took tubes into this cave. We followed guide ropes for about 100 yards, walked some, and then created a tube-train, hooking our feet to the tube behind us, and going a quarter of a mile into the cave.

That's me - Miner Bob, with Charlie (from England) and his girlfriend Cookie (from Thailand)

More village laundry

We then kayaked for 10 kilometers (6 miles) down the river to the strangest place of all: about two miles north of Vang Vieng there is a spot in the river where the water gets really deep. Built on both sides of this part of the river are bars after bars, each blaring rock music, and each with a variety of "river fun" - swings, trapeze, zip lines and slides (and I count forget - even mud wrestling). Below is the bottom of a big slide, with a man on the zip line, zipping by.

Here I am flying off the trapeze. You start about 50 feet up. There is quite a lot of pressure on your arms as you sail down off the platform. I have to admit, it was pretty fun.

Last thought: When little pebbles get into our sandals, sometimes we can ignore them, but usually we have to take off your shoes and examine are feet. The pebbles don't just tell us where we have been, but also, where we still need to go.

Really, my last thought: I thought I had no Western food cravings, until I saw peanut butter and banana pancakes - my breakfast the last two mornings.