Ahhhh Ban Na Hin (aka Kuang Khong). Went there after Vientiane - it's this little village kind of between Vientiane and Lak Sao (not that that helps those who don't know where those cities are in Laos...). The main goal of going to this little village was to see the Tham Lot Kong Lo (a cave). So Tuesday night Stuart and I hung out with the English couple as sort of a send-off. Stuart was smart and headed off after a couple pints of beerlao. Me? Not so smart... How was I to know they were aiming for a piss-out (for the non-English reading this: a piss-out is a night of getting completely pissed. aka drunk). So we soon moved to laogria which is really just sangria made with rice wine. A very tasty drink. But we soon advanced to the wonderful drink of lao lao. Rice whiskey. Now lao lao is an interesting drink. Whiskey made from rice but only aged about 1 week. And is about 50% alcohol. And for some reason the bartenders were giving it to us for free. Can't pass up free alcohol! So when the bar closed the bartenders took us to a local night club which played really cheesy American music. I rolled into my guesthouse around 3am. Plenty of time to catch that 6am bus to Ban Na Hin, right?
We arrived in Ban Na Hin somewhat worse for wear so decided to just spend the afternoon there recuperating and head to Kong Lo the next morning. We did have some problems finding food - the people at the market didn't really want to feed us but eventually we ended up with some sticky rice and sausage. An ok meal - filling at least! Later that night we ran into some falangs who work at the power plant - they pointed us in the direction of a restaurant (convienently called the OK Restaurant) so we could actually eat some real food! Met up with another English guy (Marc) who's touring around Laos on a motorbike which sounds kind of miserable to me - it's raining all the time here!
With Marc in tow we decided to head out to Kong Lo early in the morning to catch the tuk tuk with the locals. Didn't really happen cause at 6am it was pouring down rain and none of us were too motivated to move. No biggie - we ended up catching a tuk tuk around 10 after running into another couple girls who were headed for the cave. Now this trip to the cave entailed an hour long tuk tuk ride, a 4 hour boat ride and then a 2 hour boat ride through the cave and back. Did we know this when we started? Of course not! So we got to the river and had to bargain with the price of the boat. Since there were now 5 of us we had to take 2 boats. About 2 hrs into the boat ride one of the boat's engines blew out so we had to stop in a village on the way to pick up a new boat to carry on to the village at Kong Lo. And of course during this whole boat ride it was just pouring rain on us. It was kinda miserable but the scenery completely made up for it!
We got to the Kong Lo village and got the other boats to carry us through the Kong Lo cave (Tham Lot Kong Lo) and back. Unfortunately, or maybe fortunatley, we couldn't bargain this price even if we wanted to. So after waiting for them to put the motors on the boats and to fill up with gas we started off for the cave. Got to the mouth of the cave and again had to wait - we were going up river and in front of us were some rapids... I don't think I'd even want to go up some rapids... So the guides pulled the boats up the rapids by walking on shore and we walked along the shore into the cave. About an hour later we started our way into the cave. This was amazing... The guides waited so the boats weren't in sight of eachother. The only light was the headlamps on the guides - one in front of the boat, one in back. Really pretty stalagmites and stalacites. Huge caverns. Can't imagine going through in pitch black though.... Going through took about an hour and at the end we emerged in a really pretty valley with the jagged black mountains on either side. We stopped for a little while (to pay the guides) before heading back through the cave. The way back was non-eventful except for when we got on the other side. The guides steered the boats over to the side and we had no clue why. Turns out the sun had set while we were in the cave and we just couldn't tell that we had reached the end - it was all pitch black! After waiting for them to ride the boats through the rapids (again, we weren't allowed to participate) we headed back to the Kong Lo village.
Since it was dark and we had a good 4hr boat ride back, we were offered a chance to stay in the village in the home of one of the guides. Actually they split us up - the two girls went with one guide and Stuart, Marc, and I went with another. They fed us some noodle soup (the staple here) and we prepared to settle in for the night. Unfortunately Marc got the wild idea of trying some lao lao. A very bad idea. He and Stuart proceeded to get very drunk on the local lao lao. Never get an English and a Scottish guy competing for who can drink more! I just ended up babysitting the two of them all night. I feel really sorry for the villagers... Except we did get all the men drunk on lao lao as well. At about 5 am Marc woke me up (yes, I did manage to get some sleep!) and I spent all morning trying to keep him from waking all the villagers up - he was desperate for some pepsi. So sad. Let's just say that morning was less than pleasant for everyone... tempers among the two drunks weren't so good. But eventually we got everyone on a boat and headed back to Ban Na Hin. Again - the boat ride was amazing... The rest of the day was non-eventful. Both guys had hangovers and I was pretty exhausted so we just crashed when we got back to the guesthouse in Ban Na Hin.
Ok.. So I know that all sounds quite miserable. But really - the journey to the cave was absolutely amazing and really captured what Laos is about... Just taking forever to get anywhere, bargaining as hard as you can to get the farang price (probably double what a local gets) and having breathtaking scenery to help you pass the time. True, dealing with annoying drunks shouldn't really figure into it but that's life. Certainly made my experience memorable!