Where the Hell is Rory?

On the last day of volunteering near Vang Vieng, I went on a run early that morning and was feeling great at the time but just four hours later, right before we ate lunch, I was ready to lay down to sleep. It was a weird feeling and I really had no idea what had brought it on.

By the time we took the crazy tuk tuk ride back into town, all I wanted to do was sleep. I checked my temperature that night and realized I had a fever in addition to a headache and cold sweats. I decided to head to the hospital that following morning if I woke up still feeling the same which I did.

Sunrise that morning after running

As soon as we ate breakfast, I was told how to get to the Vang Vieng hospital which was luckily just a short walk from where we were. But as short as it was, it seemed far for me. I had no energy, was light-headed and dizzy and still with a constant headache. My fever was down but I was feeling ill.

Walking up into the main lobby of the hospital, I knew I was in for an experience. This was actually the fourth hospital I’d now been to now since traveling through southeast Asia after my friend was sick about 4 weeks ago so nothing was too much of a surprise but then again, I still knew it would be memorable. I was actually a bit worried I’d come down with the same thing my friend had a month ago…. Dengue Fever. I was starting out with all the same symptoms of Dengue such as nausea, headaches, fever, chills, sweats and dizziness. And of course, since I’d been staying at a place that was far out of the city, you’ll usually encounter more mosquitoes than you might otherwise.

Well, after paying in advance for a blood test and waiting thirty minutes for the results, I was eventually called back into the E.R. to visit with the doctor. As he looked up my blood test results he looked up at me and said in broken English “Malarie… No. Dengue… OK”. Umm, OK? Does that mean I have Dengue? I guess so, I thought. They prescribed the only two things you can take for Dengue and sent me on my way. I headed straight to the prescription desk and left the Vang Vieng hospital toting 2 packets of Paracetamol for fever and Oral Re-hydration Salts (Orange flavor – yum).

OK, so I’m said to have Dengue. At least I know what to expect and that is a LOT better news than getting Malaria which I was fearing since the symptoms of Malaria are extremely similar to that of Dengue. But leaving from that hospital, I still wasn’t feeling convinced of the diagnosis. Typically you need to take three blood tests over three days before they are supposed to be able to conclude Dengue. This was only the second day of symptoms and only one blood test. I had to leave Laos soon due to Visa issues and Vietnam was where we were headed next. However, I wasn’t in much shape yet to travel but I didn’t have much choice. We needed to get to Luang Prabang, north from here, in order to either catch a bus straight to Hanoi or take a flight. So after the hospital, we packed our bags and headed down the road to eat lunch and waited for the next bus heading toward Luang Prabang. By this time, I went from feeling bad to feeling like the grim reaper was going to pull up in the bus we were waiting on. I couldn’t eat, and couldn’t sleep but also couldn’t keep my head up.

Found in the hotel room, I'm just confused how hot water will become 10 minutes...

Whatever I came down with,, it was the roughest I’ve felt in a very long time. After thirty minutes of laying down on a restaurant table underneath the only fan in the place, my friend flagged down a bus on its way to Luang Prabang. We gathered up our bags and I headed straight for the back of the bus. I knew I was about to be in for the longest bus ride of my life. Its only about 150 kilometers from Vang Vieng to Luang Prabang but the bus ride took almost 7 hours! I though I was going to throw up the entire time and the poor sap next to me couldn’t help but notice the condition I was in and the plastic bag I was clutching in my right hand. It was an extremely bouncy ride all the way north through the mountains and of course, we were getting thrown side to side from all the twists and turns up and down the mountains.

Luckily, I made it without puking on my neighbor and we arrived into Luang Prabang about 7pm and I headed straight to the same guesthouse we were in weeks earlier. I was still feeling rough and ended up sleeping for the next day and a half, eating very little. Since we were planning to head to Vietnam I decided Hanoi was to be the first stop since it would be closest. And I was hoping to get to the hospital there to take another blood test to confirm what I had because even though I was still having Dengue symptoms, I still wasn’t convinced because I was experiencing things that my friend didn’t't when she had Dengue. So Hanoi was the plan only there was one major problem…. the distance to Hanoi from here was only about 253 miles but the bus, the much cheaper option, was a 30 hour bus ride! Yeah, 30 hours!! Or, for three times the cost, you can hop a one hour flight. Since the prospect of taking a thirty hour non-stop bus in my condition didn’t sound too smart an idea, I decided to cut into the budget and opted to fly.

The airport in Luang Prabang, Laos. You can literally just walk from the restaurant across the street and up to the front door of the airport in about 60 seconds.

The next day, we grabbed up our bags and took a tuk tuk to the Luang Prabang airport. We hadn’t bought a ticket yet but I was pretty sure there would be vacant seats on the plane since it was so expensive to take such a short flight and sure enough, I was right. She said there were plenty of seats left on the flight that was leaving in 4 hours. We purchased two then walked back out of the airport, across the street to a small open air diner so my friend could get some beers in since she wasn’t too keen on flying, especially on a small prop plane which we would be taking…

When asking for the bathroom to wash our hands, this was where we were directed. A dirty bucket of water next to our table. I decided it was probably better not to 'wash' my hands...

The flight actually wasn’t too bad and even though it was less than an hour of flight time, they still served a meal on the plane. We touched down into Hanoi about 6pm and after getting through customs we hopped a local bus into town which only cost us $4000 ‘Dong’ which is about 20 cents. Luckily, I was feeling a lot better today since I had to travel so much but my stomach was feeling extremely ill. After finally finding a guesthouse around 10pm, I was quickly asleep and heading to the ‘L’Hôpital Francais de Hanoi’ which is the only international hospital that is in Hanoi. We I got there, it was a bit of a relief seeing a proper hospital with several doctors on staff. However, when I went in, I was describing my situation and told them I wanted to take a blood test but I kept getting confused. They were wanting me to take four tests instead of just one and I quickly found out how much more expensive this was going to be than the previous one I had gotten in Laos. The one in Vang Vieng had run me about $5 for a test while this one was trying to charge me about $155 to take these 4 tests and then meet with the doctor which costs another $55. Since I didn’t even know if I had Dengue for sure, I decided to just pay to see the doctor first and then maybe I’d have a better idea of what I really needed to do.

The meeting with the doctor was anything but normal. I walked in to his office and he sat there and just asked me in an ironic tone why I wanted to see him. After again describing my situation, he asked me what I wanted to do. Umm, ‘What’? I asked. What did I want to do? I wanted him to tell me what I had going on! Was I the doctor here?? He then told me that he felt I had some type of gastrointestinal infection and couldn’t confirm Dengue without the tests. He prescribed me two more things in addition to the two things I was already taking. One was a type of pill that is used to treat infections as serious as Anthrax (yeah strong stuff) and the other were pills that were nothing more than ‘good bacteria’ used to fight ‘bad bacteria’ (much the same as you’d find in yogurt).

Walking into a pharmacy an hour later back in the Old Quarter of Hanoi, I quickly realized how easy it is to just walk in and walk out with a prescription for anything you asked for as they don’t even ask for proper paperwork from a doctor. By the time I got all these pills pulled together, I was already into the fourth day of this illness and I really didn’t realize it would be three more days before I’d be feeling better. And to be honest, I don’t think the prescription had anything to do with it. More likely, it was probably just a natural recovery from rest and fluids. Either way I was extremely excited to be feeling normal again and definitely didn’t want to repeat this process. I still don’t know exactly what it was that I had. It could have been something that had bitten me or something I’d eaten but over the days, but just since arriving into Hanoi, I’d drank enough water that I could have started a plastic bottle recycling center from room 206 inside the Trademark Hotel in Hanoi.

Yes, I even managed to sneak in a Sprite in these three days

Now that I had made a full recovery, I was ready again to start travelling. Maybe I should start by seeing Hanoi first….

After leaving from Vientiane, were were headed back to Vang Vieng where we had just come from less than a week ago. However, the plan wasn’t to go tubing again as the plan was to stay in a small village called Nathong to be part of volunteer project for at least the next 7 days. The name of the project is called SAELAO and is located just outside Vang Vieng and is the place we chose to volunteer after searching at least 3 weeks for a suitable place to do so. It was founded by a guy named Sangkeo (aka Bob) a few years back and to this day, he still runs the entire program.

This was the SAELAO community center where English lessons are taught every night.

Coming from Vientiane, we arrived into Vang Vieng that afternoon, spent the night in town and then organized a ride out to the Nathong village where SAELAO is located.

Getting caked in dust on our way out to the village...

And I’m not going to lie, it’s an extremely rough and dusty ride to get out there but luckily it only takes about fifteen minutes if you’re traveling by tuk tuk. To ride a bike takes a bit longer and the road isn’t exactly bike friendly. Either which way you get there, you and your bags will surely be caked in dust by the time you reach the village unless you were lucky enough to go after a heavy rain.

I took this shot from the back of our tuk tuk. Does this road look a bit dusty? My black travel bag was fully brown when we got there...

The primary school in Nathong village

When we arrived, Sangkeo (Bob) showed us around the grounds of the place which is made up of the building that faces the road which houses the kitchen, storage room and an apt above.

Our sleeping accommodations

And our mosquito net beds...

Further back from the road is the outside dining area for the restaurant, next to that sits a building that is used for knitting silk fabrics by the local village people, and further up the path sits the large community center that is used for teaching among other activities.

The organic farm at SAELAO

The land area is actually quite large and at the very back of the property sits a couple of buildings used for sleeping that can accommodate up to 14 people in one place and up to 4 in  other building. There is also an organic farm just opposite the road that belongs to SAELAO and it is where they grow all their fruits, vegetables and herbs for both the volunteers and their restaurant customers.

After becoming acquainted with the place and getting settled in, we discussed various ideas of what we could do during the day to help improve the project. English classes were always taught in the evening between 6 and 7pm although there were a few days when volunteers were asked to teach at the local school for an hour or so during the work week. But when you weren’t teaching, there were a lot of different projects you could take on during the day. Bob had his own ideas of what he wanted done but he always welcomed suggestions from his volunteers.

Although we had some other people come and go during our week at SAELAO, this was about half of our group we spent time with. I took this just outside of Phu Kham Cave.

After some discussion, we decided to take on a few of the things that he already wanted done but we thought up some other things that we thought we could do while we were there. The first thing we took on was to regrade an embankment near the restaurant and build a swale to provide proper drainage for an area that would be in strong need of it. We were here during Laos’ dry season but the rainy season was coming soon and it would surely be an issue in the area we were working on if it wasn’t properly landscaped. Below is a photo of the end result…(sorry, but I failed to take a lot of ‘Before’ photos…)

A shot of the regraded area, drainage swale and the small bridge we built

The next thing I decided to do was just walk the property to find out what needed done and what need improving. Some of the ideas I came up with was to build a bridge in one section of the property since there was nothing but some fallen trees they were using to walk across a 7 foot wide ravine. I ended up finding a suitable platform made from bamboo and just dug out the area for some horizontal beams to hold the bridge. Problem solved. Now you could at least carry large tools and equipment across.

The next day, many people were utilizing this new bridge...

Next up was to solve some storage issues. The kitchen counters had little room for cooking when it involved more than a couple people in the room due to the lack of space and shelving so I built a few movable shelves for the counters and also put up additional hooks on the wall above the counters to hold pots, pans and utensils.

Making sticky rice for breakfast...

The other area that was in dire need of shelving and organization was their storage room just off the kitchen. When I arrived you couldn’t even walk into this 12×12 foot room as all the floor space was entirely taken up with tools, food and other items scattered about. I decided to built 5 shelves along with some hanging racks for their tools for future volunteers so that things could hopefully be found easier such as tools and such. It’s hard to see by this photo since we had already filled up the shelves but this was the finished product:

The beam in the middle was installed to strengthen the floor above

Another project that was taken on was to bring new life to the signs out in front of the project along the road. Since the ‘Blue Lagoon’ and Phu Kham Cave  just up the road from here bring in so many tourists everyday, the goal was to either build new signs or to re-paint the existing ones to help promote the restaurant for increased business as well as to promote the entire project and its mission. We ended up removing a section of fence to make the entrance more inviting along with many new signs made so that they were all uniform in style and color to make the place more inviting to tourists. Here are some of the photos of what was done:

We also built a post to hold the restaurant's menu for those passing up and down the road (shown in the bottom right corner)

After having taught a couple lessons to the kids that come in the evenings to the community center, I noticed they were constantly trying to take notes using their leg as a desk. Since we couldn’t hardly build desks for all of them (there were usually around 15 kids) I decided one or two long tables would come in handy. Bob and I discussed the design and I ended up making two low tables that could be used in the center of class and they were definitely put to good use the very first night I brought them in!

The Ice Cream Man!

We also decided it would be great to add something extra to each of them so we bordered each with random numbers and the alphabet and we were trying to come up with some type of proverb or something to write on each in the middle to help the kids learn. Well, I don’t think any difficult quotes would be too good since they were still learning at a beginning level but then I thought… “who doesn’t like Dr. Suess”??? Perfect! We downloaded a few riddles from good ole Google, chose two of them, then went to work tracing them as best we could over blue painted tables before going back to fill in the letters. This was the finished product:

Before the riddles...

Filling in the Dr. Suess riddles...

As I mentioned, English lessons were taught every week night and this was definitely the highlight and most rewarding experience while working here. The kids, mostly aged between 7 years old to 15 years old, would arrive on their bikes from the village around 5:30 to 6pm and would want to play games with us until we went in to teach class. This group was very eager to learn and also very appreciative of us. For us new volunteers, it would usually take one lesson before finding out what level the kids were at with their English but after that, we could focus on what areas were needed most to teach them and luckily, there were many props, games and materials for us to use in the center to teach with.

Teaching the local children... before the tables were built

I think the craziest time I had while teaching there though was when I found an eight year old kid in the back of the classroom that was sharpening his pencil with a machete – that was definitely not something I remember having to do when I was in school…

This is an area where a couple local women create silk fabrics everyday to sell through the organization

But even though these kids were eager to learn, it didn’t mean that we didn’t have to constantly try and keep them focused. This was probably the biggest eye opener for me… trying to get 15 local Lao kids to pay attention together as a group. Sometimes, you just have to bring out the big guns like teaching them to sing “If you’re happy and you know it clap your hands”. Yeah, never thought I’d have a repeat of that in my life after a 27 year absence but here it was resurfacing! And it worked!!

Back to the Blue Lagoon...

Outside of simply working and teaching, we did do a lot of other things while we were here. When you arrive, Sangkeo offers his volunteers a week pass to the Blue Lagoon. Normally it costs 10,000 Kip per day but he offers it for 20,000 for an entire week which is nice because we went there just about every afternoon after working a long day. It also gives you access to Phu Kham Cave which Sangkeo took us to one day.

The entrance into Phu Kham Cave

Doing some cave exploring. And trust me, it's never this bright in a cave, it's just amazing how bright a camera flash can make things.

Since he grew up in this area, he knew every square inch of this enormous cave as well as all the tiny insects and bats that live in it. It was much, much larger than the previous cave I’d been in and has sections inside as high as 150+ feet from the ground to the ceiling.

One of thousands of spiders in the cave. You can spot them from up to 100 yards away as their eyes sparkle like a diamond in the light

He toured us around the inside for a couple hours and took us through to areas that no tourists could probably ever find by themselves. When we left there, we took a quick dip in the Blue Lagoon but when we were making the walk back to SAELAO, there was a restaurant along the way that had just finished construction and were having a grand opening party. All the local Lao villagers were there and we were invited in for some awesome dancing and Lao Lao whiskey shots (aka gross rocket fuel). The Lao Lao was getting passed around and just like in many Asian cultures, its very rude to turn it down. And if you have ever had bad ‘moonshine’ from back home, think of how bad that can be and then imagine throwing in pure gasoline and you can then have a pretty good idea of how disgusting this Lao Lao whiskey was! I found out later it was about 180 proof and of course, it was served warm when we had it. Delicious.

Unbelievable? NO, you better believe it! With no internet on site, you can bet there was no Photoshop either, so no trick photography at work here! Amazingly, he did this twice for us... and later came the glass shards on the floor to clean up...

A large scorpion we found out in front of the community center

So what else did I learn while here? Well, I realized that almost everything, short of appliances, can be made from bamboo. That includes floors, walls, roofs, chairs, benches, bridges, clothes, shower shelves, baskets, bowls, cups, tables, fences…. yeah, just about anything. I also learned that there are areas around this village where they blow up left over missiles from the Vietnam war. Usually about once a day, you’ll here a very loud explosion go off in the distance and from what I’ve been told, they are bombs that were dropped during the war that never exploded. Along with land mines throughout Laos, this has been a problem for the locals for decades. To this day, there still remain thousands of live land mines in Laos that take the lives (or limbs) of many children every year.

Well, on another morning, half of our group thought it would be a true Laos experience to get involved with plucking Quail feathers and preparing the birds for lunch.

While I was here, I also learned about the Laos holidays in which no manual labor can take place and we also learned traditional Lao dance. It was interesting to say the least!

It doesn't look like much but it can cook a mean pizza!!

On one night, they cooked us pizzas and to my amazement, it was some of the best pizza I’d ever had. It probably helps that everything onsite is organically grown and picked fresh the same day such as the tomatoes and herbs. And on my last night there, we got the fire going inside the oven to make some banana bread. It took close to two hours to get the coals hot enough in the oven to throw in the bread but once we did, it only took about thirty minutes before it was ready. This oven should be at every campsite back home!

Banana bread cooked in the clay oven

All in all, SAELAO was a great experience for us both and while we were here, we spent time with about 14 different volunteers as some were already here when we started and others got switched out by new volunteers a few days after we arrived. We made some great friends and overall, we felt excited to have been a part of such a project. If you want to learn more about the SAELAO project in Laos, go to http://www.saelaoproject.com/ and if you’re thinking about volunteering and would like to ask me a question, feel free to contact me through my ‘About’ page or in the comments section below…

Crossroads in Nathong Village

We truly wanted to stay longer here but after 7 days in this village, we needed to cross borders again due to Visa issues so Vietnam was our next stop and we left the following morning…

Sunset over Nathong village

Vientiane is the capital of Laos though its only home to 750,000 people. There is an ‘old’ center district of the city that sits along the Mekong River. We arrived into town in the afternoon from Vang Vieng and my friend was hoping to catch a meditation course that runs once a week in a temple not too far from the center. It was still a ten minute ride by tuk tuk so we threw in all our bags and  headed that way before we even found a place to stay.

Patuxai Monument (meaning Victory Monument) was built in honor of those who fought for Lao independence from France

After a quick lunch, I decided to stay with our bags at the restaurant since I had no desire to show up to a temple toting four backpacks and then try to leave them sitting unsecured. Well it wasn’t but two hours later that the restaurant I was waiting in was closing up shop and of course, it was storming violently outside. Within ten minutes of the storm starting, my friend showed up after having run through the rain straight from the temple.

Yep, that's the hot dog that came with breakfast - not a sausage by any means...

I told her we had to leave the restaurant but we knew of no guesthouses in the area. The girls running the restaurant spoke no English but we communicated enough together for them to understand where we were trying to go and they were trying to tell us where one was as they pointed behind the restaurant. Since I knew it would take some exploring on foot before finding this one guesthouse, I was hoping to just wait out the storm but after five more minutes of discussion back and forth between us and them, they led us out of the restaurant.

Bit of a knot here...

We grabbed our bags and followed them out into the thunder and lightning. We first took a hard left down a small alleyway which led us behind the restaurant and then it was another left down another alleyway. After ten minutes of walking in this downpour, I was wondering how much worse the situation could be when I realized a lot of the water we had to walk through smelled of the sewer and that is when I realized just how wonderful it was to have to lug my two bags, with one overhead, through four inches of sewer water in my beloved flip flops. Yay. We eventually made it to the only guesthouse in this area after making two more turns down some alleyways. Had these two girls from the restaurant not shown us the way, I’m quite sure we would have never found this place. But even though it was a wet, disgusting walk, I was grateful these girls had decided to show us the way. The guesthouse, as I had guessed, was disgusting and probably the worst place I’d stayed in months but what options did we have? We were in a section of Vientiane where we were the only tourists around and almost no one spoke English in this part of the city. This became even more apparent when we went out for dinner. Somehow, we even had stopped by eight different places before finding a place to eat dinner because every one that we went by had said they were ‘closed’ even though it was only 7 P.M. We still don’t know if it truly was too late for most of these local diners or if they just didn’t want to serve foreigners due to the language barrier.

The following day we relocated (thankfully) to the center part of town. After finding a guesthouse just off the Mekong River, we rented bikes for the day and cruised around Vientiane. One of our stops was the city’s swimming pool center and later that afternoon, we rode to the local food market. It was very similar to other markets I’d been to but you just never know what to expect when you walk through one. In this one, you had your pick of live frogs and snakes, a pig head and what seemed to be a collection of almost every freshwater fish imaginable.

We headed to place called Buddha Park on another day. To be honest, at this point in my trip after traveling through Tibet, Nepal, India and Thailand, I was about Buddha’d out. I would imagine at this point, I’ve probably seen somewhere in the neighborhood of 3000 to 4000 Buddha statues or figures from the inside of caves and temples to the top of mountains. But hey, this was a park dedicated to Buddha. I felt I just had to go! It was a crazy bus ride out there as we took a local bus and the road to get there had some extremely rough sections. I think a camel would have been a more comfortable ride…When we arrived to the park, I decided it was worth the drive though mainly due to the fact that most of the statues within the park were unlike many others I’d seen. In fact many of them were just straight weird!

Buddha Park

After getting back into town, there wasn’t a whole lot else to do or see. There is a night market that runs along the Mekong and takes place every night but I’d definitely seen my fair share of markets the past couple months while in southeast Asia.

Yep, there were plenty of statues throughout the Buddha Park that would leave you a bit confused...

After four days in Vientiane, we decided to head back north to Vang Vieng. My friend had to renew her two week Visa while here, which is ideal in Vientiane because its sits on the border with Thailand but now that we had two more weeks to travel within Laos, we found a volunteer project outside of Vang Vieng where we were heading back to…

Arrival into Vang Vieng, the tubing capital and backpacker haven of southeast Asia. We arrived early morning from a short four hour bus ride from Luang Prabang and had our pick of guesthouses. There were almost too many to choose from as well as dozens of restaurants and bars all centered around just a couple of streets. Vang Vieng, home to about 25,000 locals, has developed over the years into one of the most popular spots among backpackers traveling through Laos.

The main 'toll bridge' running from Vang Vieng

One of the reasons its become so popular is because of all the outdoor activities you can do here such as tubing. They have helped to bring a mass of tourists to this town but it still remains a ‘small’ town and I’d guess it probably has less than about a dozen main roads but it is most assuredly filled with travelers up and down the streets. By far its the cheapest place to stay on the tourist track in northern Laos with a really nice double room costing as little as 50,000 Kip which is the equivalent of about $6 USD.

This was our $6 room - not quite the dump you probably had in mind.... Comes with free bottled water, tea, coffee and wifi!!

As I mentioned, many come here for the outdoor activities the area offers around its mountainous landscape but to be more specific, its the tubing that seems to draw the biggest crowd. It has been said that the tubing here all started back in 1999 when an organic farmer gave a few tubes to his volunteers to use along the river.

Do I look ready for tubing???

Today, the town of Vang Vieng offers tubes for rent for the day, right in the center of town and there are no shortage of Tuk Tuk drivers ready to take you to the drop off point up the river for 10,000 Kip per head. We met up with a group the day before and had decided the following afternoon to go tubing to get the full ‘Vang Vieng experience’. Within two minutes of arriving at our drop off point, all of sudden I felt like I had just caught back up with all the folks I had left on the south island of Ko Phanghan at the Full Moon Party I’d just been to about 6 weeks ago.

Entering the craziness...

There are bars that line the Nam Song river from the drop point all the way back into town where this tubing adventure ends. I quickly learned that many don’t even make it down to the end of the river. Many only make it to the first three bars at the drop point while others will make it a bit further down the river but not quite back to town by sunset. During the rainy season, it takes only an hour to make it down the river but during the dry season (which we were in) it takes about three full hours to get back to town because the current is so slow and the water level is so shallow. In fact, we even got stuck on the rocks numerous times trying to get down the river because the water level was so low. But the main problem for us was the fact that we didn’t start this tubing adventure until about three in the afternoon and according to the tubing cartel that runs the rentals, we had to have these tire tubes back by 6 PM. That was going to be tough.

You'll notice the name underneath as 'Big Slide' but this is really known as the 'Death Slide'. I think you can figure why its called that. In fact, just after this person went, two more girls went and nearly killed each other when one landed directly on top of the other's head in the water (smart).

Even if we went straight down river without stopping, we still wouldn’t make it back in time since we still had to walk back into town. Originally we thought we’d just stop at a few places then catch a Tuk Tuk at a halfway point but as things have it when you’re in a large group with no appointed ‘team leader’, plans can quickly go by the wayside. By the time the sun went down, it was after 6 PM and only about half of us were then traveling together back into town. And it was a cold ride back as we rolled down the highway soaking wet in the back of a Tuk Tuk. And arriving back after the cut off point will get you some of your deposit back but they still charge you a decent amount. Either way, it was fun but one day out there was probably enough for me though I’d met others that loved it so much they spent weeks, even months doing nothing but tubing everyday!

There are actually quite a few other things you can do in this area while here and I didn’t want to limit myself to just tubing. We decided the next day we would check out some of the caves and lagoons in the area.

As common as a Honda Civic in these parts, the locals would drive these badboys up and down the streets all day long. Its like a trailer only the driver 'drives' from the trailer, not the cab and steers by swinging those long arms side to side. Just don't be in front of one if they need to slam on the brakes...

The most popular place to go is the Blue Lagoon which is at the entrance to a cave. Since it was only about 7 kilometers to get there from town, we rented bikes for the day. However, had I known what the roads were going to be like getting there, I probably would have tried to find a bike with better suspension! The roads were nothing but dirt, mud, and stones the size of your fist and it took us nearly twice as long to ride through all this since the only bikes we could find were so small that they were more fit for a ten year old.

These were the roads we took to the Blue Lagoon which take you through the small villages outside of Vang Vieng. I didn't realize it at the time but the mud we had to ride through was actually a blessing. The rains the night before kept all the dust at bay from the passing vehicles which is usually very extreme.

We headed down the dirt road about 2-3 kilometers and saw a sign for a cave called ‘Pha Kham Water Cave’ and decided to check it out. After paying a small entrance fee, we were given headlamps and we were led by a ten year old (our tour guide of sorts) up a steep hike to the middle section of a mountain where there stood a small opening to the cave.

Following our 'tour guide' to the mountains beyond

And then further up the mountain... And yes, those are some sketchy ladders!

Can you look any cooler than this?? If it doesn't look cool, maybe it just looks weird... Upon closer inspection, doesn't it look like my 'tour guide' is sitting on top of my head holding this light...I didn't see that until after I posted this picture:)

When I had to crawl in order to make it into the cave I think that is when I realized just how long it had been since I’d done something like this which I’m sure had been at least ten years. The hiking and crawling was worth it though. There were stalagmites and stalactites all throughout the cave. Some sections even seemed to glitter with the small bit of light making it through the cave entrance. Our guide took us through many different sections within the cave and I’m quite confident in saying that we would have definitely been lost inside without his guidance on the correct route to take.

Inside the first section of the cave where natural daylight was still creeping in from the cave opening

He led us all the way though to another opening on the mountainside but on this side, there was no way to hike down, it was merely a view point over the valley. When we headed back into the cave from that point, we were taken another route back, only this time, it was no easy stroll.

And when its this dark, you have to use your flash...

There were some sections you nearly had to crawl on your belly to make it through the walls of the cave and others where you had to twist and turn your body upright.

There was also a small cave you could swim in at the base of the mountain

Being a bit claustrophobic, I was hoping that part of it would be over soon. Before we made it out, I thought it would make things interesting to get everyone to turn off their lights to see just how pitch black this place was. My friend wouldn’t let that last more than about five seconds but it definitely tells you just how screwed you would be if you didn’t have a backup light or batteries when in here.

This was the cliff we came to on the opposite side of the cave. It was tough getting to this point having to slide down some sections that barely fit my shoulders so I wasn't too excited about the trek back!

The next stop, about 3 more kilometers up the road, was the ‘Blue Lagoon’ as its called by the locals. There’s no question as to the color of the water but the area is hardly a lagoon as its more of just a wide opening along the river running down through the mountains.

The Blue Lagoon

The small area is draped with ropes and swings and many will climb the center tree for a jumping point. We stayed there about an hour and then made the rough ride back into town. Vientiane, the capital of Laos, was our next stop and we left the following morning…

Sunset over the Nam Song River in Vang Vieng

After leaving from Chiang Rai, we headed back to the border town of Huay Xai once we took the three minute boat ride over the Mekong River that divides Thailand from Laos.

The boat that takes you across the quick Mekong River crossing from Thailand to Laos

This time, we wouldn’t be spending the night there as we bought two last minute tickets for the ‘slow boat’ which was to leave within the hour and head further up the river.

Pictured on the bottom are the 'slow boats' lined next to one another that take 70+ passengers down the Mekong

The slow boat essentially takes two days before it arrives into Luang Prabeng. Its an eight hour journey the first day and you spend the night in a small village and then leave again around 9AM the next morning for another seven hour ride down the Mekong River. There is an option to take a speed boat but its nearly twice the cost and I actually thought taking the two day tour down the Mekong may be more of an experience. Well, it was an experience… in more ways than one.

After a two hour delay leaving from the shore, we had made it only about an hour before the boat ran aground and got stuck along the bank. Part of the crew had to get out and literally try and push the boat off from the bank standing waist deep in the water.

The Laos Breakfast of Champions! Sandwiches are so common and so cheap in Laos and just about every vendor sells them and sales will start as early as 6AM, which was just a few minutes later that I had ordered this... with my morning coffee of course....

Surprisingly after just fifteen minutes of effort, we broke free and were soon on our way down the Mekong again. Things were going fine again and we made it another couple of hours when all of a sudden, one of the crew from the rear of the boat started shouting and quickly came running up through the boat towards the front. Here we go again, quickly heading for the nearest shore. Apparently their was a problem with the engine and we hadn’t seen a boat pass us for quite a while so I knew this could get interesting…

Broken down.... Again...

After twenty minutes of being stuck, most of the passengers, including myself, got off the boat to stretch their legs, get some sun and take pictures of the hot mess that was floating us down the river.

There were rocks jutting out of the water all along the shoreline down this section of the Mekong

We ended up sitting there for about an hour but somehow they repaired the engine and we were off again. The actual ride down the river though had some amazing scenery. There were rocks jutting out of the water and locals living along the shore. However, by the second day of spending so  many hours on this boat, I was definitely ready to make it to Luang Prabang. It was late afternoon when we eventually arrived.

The town we stayed in for one night during the two day Mekong River journey

Sunrise the following morning, getting ready to continue this quest down the river toward Luang Prabang

Since we were in Laos and after spending the night in a very small village, I really had no idea what to expect when we actually got into the city of Luang Prabang. I hadn’t seen any photos of the place but needless to say, I was amazed at the amount of charm the city had.

View overlooking one section of Luang Prabang

Luang Prabang is bordered by two rivers that converge together, the Mekong and the Nam Khan River

It is a city with just over 100,000 residents and has a very strong French influence. It was occupied by the French until the second World War when in 1945, it declared its independence from France. But still today, the city has kept its French colonial atmosphere which can make it almost hard to believe you are still in Laos in the middle of Southeast Asia.

One of the side streets in Luang Prabang

Starting around 5:30AM and lasting till about 6:30AM, hundreds of monks from monasteries all over the city walk the streets collecting alms. I've brightened the photo but this was taken just before 6AM.

There were definitely a lot of temples throughout the city but after being in SE Asia for so long, I didn’t have too much interest to run from one to the next sightseeing. The only one that seemed worth a visit for me was the one in the center of town up on the hill called Wat Chom Si. It was about a fifteen minute hike to the top but it was well worth the effort. The temple was spread out along the entire top of the mountain and you have full 360 degree views from here. Unfortunately, like many days in Laos right now, it was extremely hazy.

Part of Wat Chom Si

On another day, we left for Kouang Si Waterfall which was an area about an hour outside of town with dozens of waterfalls, some as small as just a couple feet in height with others cascading down as high as 150 feet.

Kuang Si Waterfall

It was truly hard to believe freshwater could be this blue out in the middle of the forest. And the water was decently warm as well even though many areas didn’t get much sun. It took about an hour and a half to hike all the way up through the falls area and it was an even tougher hike to climb up above the tallest of the falls with nothing but slick rock and hard pack dirt. There were many people out swimming in different areas and some places had swings from tree tops out into the blue waters.

The highest point of the waterfall trailing up the mountainside.

From Luang Prabang, we were heading further south into Laos from here and the next stop was Vang Vieng….