Into the Darkness - Tham Lot Kong Lo Cave

After spending a few days in Vang Vieng - a backpackers haven along the Nam Song river with tubing and plethora of riverside bars with awesome rope swings - we began heading south once more, in route to a 7km cave we had read about in the Lonely Planet.

We bought a public bus ticket to go first from Vang Vieng to the capital of Vientiane. When I saw the bus, I had some initial concerns. It was basically a rusting box of tin from the 1960's that barely held together. We seriously debated upgrading to the "V.I.P" bus, but Eric convinced me that we should have the local experience. I agreed, having seen a few other foreign backpackers getting on board and knowing that at least the road was not as steep or windy as the one from Luang Prabang to Vang Vieng (we took a tourist minivan on that route - though not a whole lot better).

After an hour or so of driving, we stopped at a small village and saw that the right-front tire was leaking. Unfortunately, the shop at the village didn't have the necessary tools to fix the tire...so what did they do?...fill it up with air and keep driving. About 25 mins later, we stopped in front of what kinda/maybe looked like an auto shop, where they did have the correct tools. They pulled the spare tire from the roof of the bus - it was old and almost completely stripped... oh great! Because they didn't quite know how to take off the bolts in the correct order, it took a while to change the tire. Meanwhile, I stood by the side of the road hoping the V.I.P bus would appear so I could flag them down and get on. However, trial and error prevailed and they fixed the tire before I had the luck of seeing the other bus. In the end, we made it safe and sound without any further mishaps...only frequent stops to let locals off/on, load on/off local cargo, pick up someone at their house, stop for a pee break (men standing on one side, women squatting on the other - I held it), or let local vendors on board to sell sticks of BBQed birds and "God knows what." It was actually quite amusing and, I must admit, fun once I stopped worrying and just trusted in the sturdiness of the old bus :).

We stayed in Vientiane only one night at Joe's Guest House, which had the nicest bed we'd slept in for months. The next day, we were off again to the village of Ban Na Hin which would be our jumping off point for the cave excursion. The public bus on the second day was much nicer and more comfortable. The only slightly annoying, but culturally immersing, aspect was the TV at the front of the bus that loudly blasted cheesy Thai/Lao music videos (love songs only) the entire 5-hour journey. Eric loved it as you can imagine! The bus dropped us at the junction of route 13 and route 8. The driver and a few others got out to show us where to catch a sawngthaew (truck) to continue 50km east on route 8 to get to Na Hin...the people in Laos are extremely helpful in this way. We were lucky that there was a truck departing shortly and we jumped in the back with our bags. A German couple - Manuela and Friedore - were also on the truck and planning the same route, so we agreed to travel together to share expenses and good company.

When we arrived at the village of Na Hin, we checked into a simple guest house and ventured into the small town to find some food. It had been raining off and on the last few days, so the dirt roads were quite muddy and full of puddles, but after some maneuvering, we saw a small sign for Tho's Restaurant. When we walked in, we were greeted by the very friendly, English-speaking Tho - an 11 year old boy. He seated us, took our orders and then pulled up a chair while his mother cooked our meals and asked us to sign his address book in which he'd been collecting tourists' email and home addresses for the past year. The book was filled with names from all over the world and he was quite proud of it. He also showed us a number of gifts he'd received in the mail from foreign friends he'd made and offered his young guide services to go see the waterfall the next morning - on a donation basis only. He was very adorable.

We rose early the next morning, hoping to take in the waterfall in the morning and then head by boat to the village near the cave in the afternoon. We picked up Tho, who brought along his snorkel mask he'd received from a French tourist, and then headed into the jungle on a well-marked path. The first part of the hike was easy...it was a nice forest path surrounded by towering white trees with spotted bark. We waded through a few small streams, but nothing too major. Then, we arrived to the main river and To began leading us upstream towards the waterfall.

Initially, we thought we were still following some sort of path, but after about 20 minutes of scrambling over huge rocks, crossing the river in precarious places and a few near misses of slipping and getting soaked, we realized that maybe this wasn't the traditional "tourist" path. We asked Tho, but he insisted this was a better way than the normal path where you had to climb up a mountainside...he wanted to save us the effort. However, after about an hour of slow progress we came to a dead-end where it just wasn't very possible to keep picking our way over rocks with the increasingly strong current. When Tho tried to cross the river at one point and got sucked down by the current, pin-balling off a few rocks, before emerging thankfully unscathed, we decided it was time to turn around and go the long way back to the actual path to the waterfall.

Long story short - we made it back to the path and climbed the small mountain to get to the waterfall. The path was a bit "iffy" in places, but certainly passable with a bit of care. The waterfall was beautiful and the jungle trekking of the day was worth the effort. We gave To a small donation after lunching back at his family's restaurant and he was delighted...his mother gave him that look of parental pride and it was quite cute. He will certainly be a great guide one day - but might just need to stick to the tourist path. The only problem was that our morning hike took much longer than anticipated, so in the end, we had to stay another night in Na Hin and make our way to the cave the following day.

At 7AM the next day, the local sawngthaew arrived to take us to the river to catch the boat to the cave. In addition to us and the German couple, there were two other pairs of travelers, which benefited all of us in bargaining and sharing the boat trip. The ride took 3 hours in a small, wooden, motorized canoe. The boats seem a bit tipsy at first, but when you see the locals loading in motorbikes and assortments of other goods, it's easier to feel more confident about your own bags not sinking to the bottom of the river. The scenery on this trip was truly gorgeous - limestone cliffs, rice fields and many riverside villages with children waving from the banks when you pass.

Once we arrived to the village near the cave, we were taken (along with the German couple) to our home stay family and served a lunch of Ramen noodles, fried egg, sticky rice, and a strange greenish rice dish. Everything was quite edible, though the sticky rice did have a few small ants crawling around, so we only took a small bit. After lunch, we were off again on another motorized canoe to visit the cave.

Tham Lot Kong Lo cave is notorious because you can only pass through its 7km distance by boat. The entrance to the cave has some rapids, so we actually had to go into the mouth of the cave and the drivers had to transfer our motor to a different wooden canoe already inside. One boatman sat at the front of the boat with two lights to help navigate and the driver sits at the back, also with a light. We also brought a flash light. Once inside, it is complete darkness other than the artificial lighting. The caverns within are expansive rooms with vaulted ceilings and some sizeable underground waterfalls that soak you as you pass under. There are large rock formations, stalagmites and even some rocky beaches that you can see when illuminated by flash light. It was a bit eerie knowing that you are under a mountain, on a river, in a small wooden boat, with flashlights. I think we were both contemplating what we would do if for some reason we tipped. Luckily, the German couple were in a boat not too far behind and our boatmen do this on a daily basis, so everything went smoothly. All in all, through and back, the journey took an hour. In Eric's words, "One of the coolest things I've ever done!"

When we arrived back to the village, we spent the evening observing village life. We taught the local children to play the card game "war," and took part in some domestic activities like grinding the green rice stuff. I got invited into another household where the mother of the house was so delighted to sit and try to communicate with myself and Friedore. For dinner, we had the same meal as lunch with the addition of fried little fish (literally the whole fish) which we politely picked at, but we could not manage to eat the head. The furniture in most Lao village homes is the floor and some mats and pillows, which is where they prefer to sit, eat, sleep, etc. We slept on mats on the floor near the house grandma (who had an obsession with beattle nuts - a sedative that turns your whole mouth red) and the young son.

At 4:30AM, we were awoken by roosters crowing, ducks quacking as they waddled through the village, puppies whining and people beginning to get up and ready for the day. We managed to stay in bed until 5:30ish and then were served breakfast - again same as lunch and dinner, but with much bigger portions...we couldn't come close to finishing and both of us were glad it was only one day/night of the food. Before we ate, our house mother and grandmother sat us down to take part in a BACI ceremony where they bless you and the food, tie six pieces of yarn around your wrists as they chant things in Lao, and give a food offering to Buddha (we presume). Then they sat and watched us eat every bite of food, trying to show us the right way to do it and laughing all along. While they watched us at every meal, we didn't have the opportunity to observe their family meals, which they had privately (we assume this is the polite thing to do with guests).

Before we left on our boat, we snuck away to have a last wander through the village to observe the morning activities and greeted the kids as they got ready to leave for school, watched an old man weaving a basket, a woman hard at work at the loom weaving lovely cloth and a woman with a basket at her back and a shovel in her hand as she walked out to the rice field. It was such an honor to be in the midst of village life and observe first hand how they live - and how content they are with the simplicity of daily tasks and community socializing. It became very apparent that here, the saying "it takes a village to raise a child" is practiced fully...the children roam so frequently from house to house, and from hip to hip, that you don't know which one belongs to who. It is wonderful.

After the boat ride back, we said our goodbyes to Maneula and Friedore and hopped on board a sawngthaew to continue our journey south. Now, we are on our way to a region near the Cambodian border called the 4,000 Islands on the Mekong where we plan to chill out for a few more days before heading to Cambodia. Laos has a way of sucking you in - the people and places are so wonderful and welcoming and we've truly enjoyed our experiences in this country and would highly recommend it to anyone coming to SE Asia. We'll write again soon...

Mariah