This morning, his main joke revolved around two tribes comparing their intelligence through one of the guys capturing his farts in pieces of bamboo. Stephen and I tuned out after the plot began revolving around 'bamboo farts', so I cannot tell you what the punchline was.
We grabbed Breakfast in a town near Tat Leuk. I had fried eggs and Stephen had an omelette and we shared some fried rice. I also had an iced coffee that was so strong and so sweet it was nearly undrinkable. The Lao people seem to like their strong caffeine - coffee thicker than the Turks and a large selection of caffeine heavy energy drinks like Red Bull (a Thai creation I am told) and M150 (the Lao version of the same drink). You see more locals drinking energy drinks than Americans drink soda.
We got back on the road and stopped a few hours later for lunch at Lieng Kham. Stephen an I were still really full from from breakfast so we only had some water and I bought some dried fruit.
We got to Kong Lor and checked into our hotel before leaving to walk down to the entrance to the Tham Kong Lor cave around 3pm. Tham Kong Lor is a 7.5km long river cave where the river flows under a mountain. We rented a headtorch (as I had forgotten mine back at our hotel) and boarded a shallow longboat across the pool to the cave entrance. There we walked into the cave and caught another shallow longboat, this time with a motor. Each boat had a capacity of 3 passengers and two boat hands, but they made Stephen and I take our own boat as he was so large.
The cave was very dark and you could tell the waters were quite high this year. The first part of the journey went fairly smoothly. The boats were a bit rickety so I was a little nervous about my nice camera getting wet, but soon we arrived at the lighted part of the cave where they have illuminated the more fascinating of the stalactites and stalagmites. Here you get out and walk along the path. Although our eyes adjusted well to the lighting, it was a bit difficult to get good photos in the cave in general, but it was truly the most spectacular cave of the trip.
After we left the walking portion, we boarded our boat again and were off. We bottomed out the boat twice on some sand dunes, and the second time happened just before we reached the exit of the cave. The propeller caught and we spun around and almost capsized as the boat began taking on water. The driver and guide jumped out to right the boat and managed to catch us before we completely went over I had my camera up in the air ready to keep it above water just in case. They managed to get us turned around despite the strong current. Stephen got the job of bailing the water as we proceeded further upstream.
We emerged from cave shortly after our near capsize into an open river and paused at a bank on the other side where there was the remnants of village or market where only a drink and snack stand remains (maybe they close the rest during rainy season). Our drivers didn't speak English, so we weren't sure what we were supposed to do. After about 10 minutes, one of the drivers came over and tried to make us think we needed to stay the night at a homestay as it was too dark to go back. Eventually we got him to understand that we had paid to go there and back and that we needed to go back today. Then just like that we all got back in our boats and headed back into the cave for the return journey.
Already nervous about another potential capsize opportunity, it got even worse when our drivers headlamp went out during a very curvy portion of the cave. Somehow the boy guide in front of me managed to get his off and walk it to the driver in the back without us tipping over or running into anything. Had I not had my camera, I probably wouldn't have been so nervous as we had lifejackets and would have eventually floated downstream out of the cave. I really didn't want to lose the photos from our trip, or my camera.
It was a very tense journey for me from that point as even though my headlamp contributed to the light of the driver, there really wasn't enough light to safely navigate in my opinion. Several times we thought we might crash into some rocks, and I said about a hundred prayers for our safety enroute. But we made it safely out of the cave and I just about kissed the ground.
But we still had the trip across the pond, and as we were the last boat to leave they loaded our boat up with 4 extra workers returning from the cave for the day. Zyrah, one of the gals from our trip, was also in our boat and she nearly hopped off the boat before we were fully docked as she too was nervous about the overcapacity of the boat.
When we got back to our room, there were som ants in our food bag. Despite most things being sealed up, we had to throw out most of what we had. We then took showers and headed down to the dining area of the lobby for some dinner before we were leaving to go watch a Baci (Baasii) ceremony. I had some stir fried pork with veggiesand rice, which was very tasty.
It was about a 10 minute walk to where the Baci ceremony was being held, but it took us nearly 20 min as it was now raining and the roads were quite muddy and hard to walk. The ceremony is performed to send out the bad spirits and call back the good spirits to ones body, as the local people believe they wander away and need to be called back fo safe travels so all your good spirits can travel with you. This is done through holding of a chicken or egg while white strings are tied around ones wrists, all while sitting around an altar made of banana tree leaves. Stephen and I just observed as we did not believe it was appropriate for us to participate given our strong Christian beliefs. But it was very interesting.
We also drank some home-brewed 'whisky' made of letting rice and corn ferment in a clay pot for several days. It tasted more of yeast than of alcohol.
I'm not sure if it was the 'whisky' or my dinner, but I soon felt quite sick to my stomach and had to excuse myself to head back to the hotel. On top of feeling ill, I discovered that the ants were back and had fund my daypack to be their target this time. I had to take evrery single thing out of the backpack and de-ant it and then had to completely rince out the backpack, too. It seems a renegade pretzel bit and some cashew crumbs that had broken free from an earlier snack were the culprits.
With the ants handled, Stephen was back and we went to bed on the incredivly springy mattress. It was so bad I had to sleep on top of my fleece doubled-up to protect my ribs from being poked. Oh the joys of budget travel......
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