{"id":854,"date":"2012-07-19T09:11:05","date_gmt":"2012-07-19T16:11:05","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/lifeisahighway.casaroberts.com\/?p=854"},"modified":"2013-06-15T00:49:29","modified_gmt":"2013-06-15T07:49:29","slug":"giggity","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeisahighway.casaroberts.com\/?p=854","title":{"rendered":"Giggity….."},"content":{"rendered":"

I may have jinxed our luck with the rain in my previous post as we woke up this morning to dark skies and liquid sunshine.\u00c2\u00a0Just like at home though the weather often changes fairly quickly, and by the time we are finished our breakfast the rain has mostly stopped and the skies are just a little overcast. \u00c2\u00a0Our plan for today is to take a long walk\/hike across the river and through some rice fields to a cave we have heard about. \u00c2\u00a0It is completely in the opposite direction of all the madness of the tubing so it seems like a good way to kill a few hours.<\/p>\n

There is a bridge just down from our hotel that leads across the river, and just like the 520 bridge back home, it is a toll bridge \ud83d\ude42 \u00c2\u00a0Depending on how you are crossing (walking, motorbike, tuk-tuk, etc.) the toll varies from about $0.50 to just over a dollar. \u00c2\u00a0In local standards this is a decent amount, and having the bridge concession is likely quite lucretive as there is a lot of traffic going back and forth.<\/p>\n

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On the other side of the river is a small village and then a road that heads off perpendicular to the river into a valley that we have seen from our hotel balcony. \u00c2\u00a0There is a loop you can do through the valley with various stops along the way at caves and other sights, but the whole loop is about a 35km bike ride and supposedly some rough terrain in a few places, so having had a bike experience already we are just walking.<\/p>\n

A couple of km down the road there is a sign marking the trail to the first cave. \u00c2\u00a0There is a massive limestone karst rising straight out of the rice fields that we can see from our hotel, and that is where the cave is. \u00c2\u00a0The path goes right through the rice fields and to call it a trail is really a fairly liberal use of the term. \u00c2\u00a0It is probably about another km through the rice fields and then we start to get close to the karst and into the forest. \u00c2\u00a0As soon as we get near though we encounter a small stand out in the middle of nowhere manned by a couple of Laos people – they want 10,000 kip each (about $1.25) for us to see the caves. \u00c2\u00a0We pay our ‘admission’ and one of the fellows waves his arm in the general direction of the path we are supposed to follow and off we go.<\/p>\n

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About half way down that trail we run into another young Laos boy who points towards the cave and starts to lead the way through the jungle. \u00c2\u00a0We did not really think much of this, and thought it was perhaps part of the 10,000 admission we paid for him to show us where the cave was. \u00c2\u00a0When we get to the cave, he points inside and pulls a few LED headlamps out of his bag and in we go; however, after about 50 feet he gestures to a small opening that we need to go through and then asks us if we want a guide, and there it is – the bait and switch again! \u00c2\u00a0For another 50,000 kip he will guide us through the cave, otherwise he wants his lamps back and we are free to carry on by ourselves if we like. \u00c2\u00a0We were feeling a little burnt out, and the approach just turns us off, so we said no and left the cave and made our way back to the main road.\u00c2\u00a0We walked down the road a little way taking in some of the scenery in the valley, and then turned around and headed back towards town and our hotel – it was getting to be time for lunch, and one of those sandwiches on the fresh french bread was looking pretty good.<\/p>\n

We got back to town at just the right time because the skies decided to open up again for some more rain. We just made it to a place for lunch before it started coming down fairly hard, but we figure by the time lunch is done it might pass again so this works out OK for us anyway.<\/p>\n

Due to the party activity that happens here in the evenings, most of the guests in the town are more than a little tired and slow moving in the morning\/early afternoon, and I think because of that the restaurants have adapted their furniture for the crowds. \u00c2\u00a0Almost every place where food is served, at least half of the tables are more like bed with some throw pillows and a short table in the middle. \u00c2\u00a0Customers can then lay back and relax while recuperating from the night before, or while having their lunch. \u00c2\u00a0A lounger would not be much good without some entertainment, so to keep the patrons entertained all of these restaurants have 2 or 3 TVs playing non-stop reruns of either Friends, or The Family Guy.<\/p>\n

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We are about half done our lunch when the heavens decide to really open up, and we are now right in the middle of some serious industrial strength rain, so Mrs. Columbus and I hunker down into our loungers and watch us some Family Guy!! \u00c2\u00a06 episodes later Mrs. Columbus is feeling a little numb – I think because Family Guy is not really much of a rom-com, and the rain has finally let up so we venture out to find ourselves a bananna pancake and do some last minute shopping.<\/p>\n

We will be leaving here tomorrow for Vientiane and the start of our journey back to Seattle, so we go back to our hotel to start to pack up and then meet our friends Jackie, Bruce and Stephanie for our last dinner in Vang Vieng. \u00c2\u00a0 The rain continues to come off and on, so we decide to have dinner beside the river at the hotel so that we don’t get trapped out in a downpour. \u00c2\u00a0The meal was quite nice, and with tranquil setting, and the good company we really enjoyed our last night here.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I may have jinxed our luck with the rain in my previous post as we woke up this morning to dark skies and liquid sunshine.\u00c2\u00a0Just like at home though the weather often changes fairly quickly, and by the time we are finished our breakfast the rain has mostly stopped and the skies are just a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[28,30],"class_list":["post-854","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-summer-2012","tag-laos","tag-vang-vieng"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeisahighway.casaroberts.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/854","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeisahighway.casaroberts.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeisahighway.casaroberts.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeisahighway.casaroberts.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeisahighway.casaroberts.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=854"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/lifeisahighway.casaroberts.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/854\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1324,"href":"https:\/\/lifeisahighway.casaroberts.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/854\/revisions\/1324"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeisahighway.casaroberts.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=854"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeisahighway.casaroberts.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=854"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeisahighway.casaroberts.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=854"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}