Village stay and boating through a cave
Trip Start
Aug 15, 2006
1
138
155
Trip End
May 27, 2008
Konglor,
Lao Peoples Dem Rep
Tuesday, March 18, 2008
The family didn't speak any English so communicating always had everyone in hysterics as we'd all be using actions! We assumed we were being sent to go and have a wash in the river with the locals so we set off and did just that and had a fun water fight with some local kids.
For tea we had mountains of sticky rice, noodles, veg and possibly beef but I really struggled after being sick for two days but didn't want to look rude
Heading out of Ban Na Hin
. There was mountains of food even for our appetites! Dinner was followed by a Baci ceremony where we were given string bracelets which were supoosed to tie sprits to them for 3 days (???). Today we got up and went in the motorised boat towards Tham Kong Lo cave. At the entrance we came across the backpackers we'd met at the restaurant. One of them (Richard) had lost his camera in the cave and was heading back through to search for it.
We decided that we didn't want to take the boat back through the cave and would hike over the top of the mountain instead. The gude tried to talk us out of it but eventually persuaded someone to take us for some money. We got the distinct impression that no-one really knew where the start of the trail was or where it actually went!
After hours of scrambling over razor sharp wet rocks and coming across a random guy with a machine gun in his hand, we made it back to the river exhausted and hot. We swam with some water buffalos and ran into some locals who were quite funny. They kept making me go back in the river as my clothes were still covered in dirt. They then tried to make us down the local Lao Lao, me being the one who was always told to have extra. Ollie insisted he had to drive the motorbike but they wouldn't take no for an answer!
We couldn't get too far on the bike anyway as the tyre went flat. Our only option was for Ollie to make it to a garage on his own while I walked/ran (now quite tipsy) to meet him later. The gods were on our side as literally less than 500m down the road was a bike garage! They changed the inner tube and charged us a decent price and we were quickly off. Went back to Ban Na Hin to return the bike and got ice-cream.
