Vang Vieng Some More: The Day Out

So, the day everyone was leaving, I went and rented a bike, and was deadset on just riding and seeing whatever was see-able. I hopped on and gave it a trial run, and rode around the small town a bit, seeing Evan before he left, and hung out with him for a little until his van showed up. I also did a bit of translation for the “front desk”, such as it was, at his guesthouse, between them and a prospective Chinese client. The Chinese person didn’t speak English, let alone Lao, and the Lao employee didn’t speak Chinese, so I moderated between them and got the guesthouse a client, in the end. I should have gotten a commission!

After Evan left, I set forth. First, I went south, and I just went a really long frickin way. I’m going to be honest here, and this is why this entry won’t be very long at all; there wasn’t much to see; being out in the middle of nowhere, just a stopping point between Luang Prabang and Vientiane, Vang Vieng just sits on one major road going between these cities. There’s really not a ton of roads to travel on in Laos in general, as far as I can tell, so you’re pretty constrained to whatever lies on the road no matter where you go.

I traveled a good amount south, maybe 15km or so, past a military installation and factory. I’m not sure what the factory was exactly, but it seemed like it was probably a cement factory or something along those lines. There were signs around that prohibited photography, so, I didn’t take any pictures, as I had no desire to be shot by Lao military.

I decided to turn around when I reached a random gas station. I went inside and got a couple of bottles of water. They thought it was somewhat amusing that I had come by on a bicycle, and we communicated primitively as best we could. A monk who was just chillin wanted to try out my bicycle, so he hopped on, and, after being surprised by the height of the seat (followed by basic jokes about how much taller than them I was), he rode around the station a few times before bringing it back to me.

Always nice to make a monk happy, I guess?

After drinking my water, I got back on and went all the way back.

I had read somewhere that there were some caves and such nearby, which is what I was gunning for when I went south originally, but I realized I took the wrong road south out of Vang Vieng. In fact, there were two roads in Vang Vieng. One of them was the . . . I guess you’d call it the highway, and the other was the only other main local road in that town, and it just went from one point on the highway towards these caves.

So when I got back to the juncture, I took a couple of pictures of the intersection and the gas station lying there, depicted here:

Then rolled on to the other road, and turned south again to try one last time to find the caves and such. Shortly thereafter, I saw the first of what ended up being a long series of handcrafted signs directing me towards the caves.

I had found myself off the paved road quite quickly; first I hurtled through a gravel alley, then soon I was on dirt paths, which were pretty rocky, resulting in a chattering jawbox for myself and probably some loosened screws for my bike.

It was a pretty enough trail, I guess, even if it was super rickety. Here’s a few pictures!

Finally I found myself at a wooden bridge crossing, which was situated across from what I guess could be called a visitor’s center. I took a couple pictures from there, then rolled up.

They were charging a small fee to enter the caves; included with the fee was a guide who would lead the way. I had to figure this out myself though, as it wasn’t explained in anway beyond asking for a certain amount of kip, and then a guy hopping on a motor scooter and driving forward. As I caught up with him, he pointed me in the direction of one cave, and I thought at first he was just letting me know where to go. However, he went over there too as soon as I headed in that direction, and so began my exploration of some of the caves here.

He didn’t speak a word of English, and didn’t bother with speaking any Lao either, so this was one of the more interesting guided tours I’ve been a part of thus far. He took me into two caves. They had a variety of chambers, and he’d show me the interesting parts (or what he thought were the interesting parts) by shining a light on it for more than a second, or even tapping on certain parts. He had also given me a flashlight to use for my own exploration.

It was interesting being in a cave with basically no one else, and with no garish tourist lights set up to ruin it. It was nice, and almost otherworldly. It probably helped that my guide pretty much was incapable of communicating with me.

The second cave ended with a bit of water. There were some tubes there, and he encouraged me to hop in one, but given the fact that I wasn’t dressed to get in the water, in addition to the fact I had almost no light and no idea how deep the water was, I decided against it. It took me a while to make this decision, granted; I went down to the water’s edge and put my foot into it on accident, thinking I was stepping onto the last edge of rock. The water was so clear that it was impossible to tell where it started, pretty much.

This meant my jeans got a bit more wet than I would’ve liked, but hey, who’s counting, right? Having seen this part of the cave, my tour was over, and so we headed back out, and I got back on the bike and headed back to town.

The entire time I biked through the fields on the way back, it sounded to me as if there was some small critter rustling right along beside me, which creeped me out a bit. I never did figure it out, but I suspect it was actually a part of my bicycle, or maybe even my camera bag’s loose straps making noise, but the acoustics of it sounding as though it had come from a bit further to my side.

Finally I got back to town, but I kept riding. I suddenly ran into some of the Brits I had previously encountered on the boat from Chiang Khong to Luang Prabang; I stopped to talk to them for a few minutes, and we agreed to meet back up a bit later in the evening, around 6 or so. So I kept riding north, just to get as much out of my biking for the day as I could.

There wasn’t much up there, either. I passed by an organic farm that’s listed in the Lonely Planet guide for making organic mulberry pancakes or something like that. I guess its a place you can volunteer and stuff, too, but I wasn’t particularly interested, even though I was later told that those pancakes were top notch.

To some extent, I was trying to figure out where the side road was that took people to tubing, but it was too late in the afternoon to spot any tuk tuks heading there laden with tubes, so I was just left to guess at it, and was totally unsuccessful in that regard, so I headed back to town, to drop off the bike and get a shower.

After that, I headed to the guesthouse that apparently all the Brits were staying at. Some of them were hanging out out front, and they had a little puppy playing around to boot, so I sat down and caught up with their adventures of the past couple days, as well as letting them know mine. More and more people showed up, eventually including a Dutch girl named Marije, who it turned out was the replacement non-Brit to myself in their group (she was even blonde also!).

We kicked back a beer or two out in front patio of this place. Eventually, a Chinese man comes by, and they all greet him in a rather friendly fashion, suggesting they were familiar with him. Soon, I find out that he, his wife and his son had all shared a bus with these British people from Luang Prabang to this town.

In short order, it was determined we were all going to dinner together, which meant we were going to get Chinese food, as there happened to be a couple Chinese restaurants in town (not surprising given the number of shell-shocked Chinese visitors I’d seen kayaking along the river).

This was apparently a little disappointing for some of the Brits, who were somewhat deadset on getting pizza, it seemed. I didn’t really care one way or the other, though, so soon we were off. We walked, with Mr. Sun, as he was known to us, leading the way, telling us it wasn’t that far away. Twenty minutes later, we reached the place. It only takes about twenty minutes to cross town, so it was just a coincidence that our destination, as well as our point of origin, both lay on the very borders of town.

When we got there, we found his family was already there, and we all took our seats, with me sitting right next to Mr. Sun and his wife and son just across from him. Over the next several hours, I played translator for all parties, as Mr. Sun had the most capability of speaking English in his family, and it was pretty minimal.

Oddly, apparently on the way to Vang Vieng from Luang Prabang, Mr. Sun had developed the strongest relationship with Ricky, the Irishman, who had the thickest accent out of all of the people by far. I have no idea how they were able to communicate, but there you have it.

We had quite the feast, but a couple of the Brits were totally unaccustomed, and actually left to go get some food elsewhere. The ones that stayed, nevertheless, were still mostly unaccustomed, which was just utterly bewildering to me. Apparently there isn’t much Chinese food in the UK? I don’t know.

I warned everyone ahead of time, but they were still surprised when Mr. Sun offered to pay the whole bill. There was much protestation, as there’s supposed to be, but of course Mr. Sun still paid. The Brits were actually really worried about it, but the entire meal only totaled up to about $50 USD, and it was about 10 people or so, so I thought it was actually a pretty good deal.

From there, we moved on to some of the bars. In particular, we went to a bar that specialized in Mushroom milkshakes. I got myself some more beer lao, and some sprite for the mom as well as a smoothie for the kid, and everyone else got whatever they got. I don’t want to name any names, but ultimately Mr. Sun had a bit of one of the mushroom shakes, without really knowing what it was.

The people who let him have some said they had explained it to him, but were either being fools or totally naive in thinking that he could possibly understand what they mean. His English skills really were that basic.

He disappeared for a while, which was pretty scary. We looked around, hoping for the best, but couldn’t find him. His wife and son actually went home at this point, with the wife saying it was just too late for the son to be out any further, and that she figured her husband would show up at some point.

I wasn’t too comfortable with the whole situation, but I really had no control over it, of course. Eventually, it turned out Mr. Sun was just at another nearby hut talking to some random people, but that didn’t do much to quiet my fears over how he’d cope in his drug-addled state.

I relayed my anxieties to Marije, who had a more sympathetic ear than any of the others. From this point on, Marije became my main buddy in the area. We talked for a good long time, and after watching Mr. Sun dance entirely by himself for an hour or so, we decided to call it a night, and went back to her guesthouse to chat a while, which devolved into a political debate that started off as an argument and then simmered out a bit, and ended off friendly enough, at which point I said goodnight and headed back to my own guesthouse. The next day, we’d all go tubing together. Hooray for reruns!