Floating along In Laos

Viang Vien is a little town on a river that has become quite a little tourist mecca. The mountains that rise up from the river plain are limestone and riddled with amazing caves.



There is kayaking and inner tubing on the river, although more drinking at the riverside bars seems to go then actual inner tube sitting. The bars are built of wood and bamboo and rise up off the river banks seeming to defy gravity. Employees of the bars fish you out of the river with long bamboo poles as you drift by so you can climb up, collapse on a bamboo pavilion and drink BeerLao. Yes, we did the tubing. And yes, large BeerLaos were consumed. Another very popular feature of the riverside bars are the swings and zip lines that swing or zip you out over the river, hopefully over a deep part, and then send you plunging down into the river, hopefully missing the other tubers and kayakers. Rich did a zip line but we both passed on the really high and long swing from which younger tubers then us were doing flips and massive belly flops. I didn't want to have to go up the bar and order "a BeerLao and two ibuprofen please."



As you travel you make discoveries about yourself, some surprising, some not so much. One of the not surprising discoveries about myself is that I will not become a professional spelunker. For one thing, real spelunkers don't wear skirts.



We went into four caves while in Viang Vien and at no point did I feel a burning desire to go further into the caves. And at every point, when we got back to the place where you see the light from the mouth of the cave my brain reacted as if I had been trapped in the cave for weeks - Oh thank goodness, there's the exit! Two of the caves we visited were with guides on a kayak/cave trek day trip. Both were in one spot and out another, and one of the outs involved a little crack through which you had to crawl. Oh boy! Crawling through a crack to get out of a cave! I was third in line to get out of the cave and had to stop to watch my six foot five husband try to wedge himself through the little crack. Our guide, Air, kept saying to Rich, put your right leg back all the way. This is all the way, Rich said. Air is about five foot five and could have done a tango in the crack. Rich got out with only a skinned knee. The caves are amazing inside. Huge caverns carved out by water running through the limestone. In the wet season a lot of them still have water pouring through them, and we had to wade through streams in one.

Luang Prabang has been more calm, no tubing or kayaking for us here, although both are offered. We rented bikes and did another Rich Coffin adventure tours bike ride, complete with lunch stop at a small roadside resturant.



It is a really beautiful town with a French Colonial feel to it.


It is a Unesco World Heritage Site, and has some damn fine poodles running around.



There was a big festival going on for New Years eve at a spot along our bike ride, I stopped and got a photo of Rich with two girls in local festive dress.