11pm
2am
Sometime around 7:30am
The general arrangement from last night for today was Greg or I would knock on the others door (I stipulated after nine) then decide what to do with the day.
I walked towards his Guest House and met him along the way coming back from breakfast. I haven’t eaten yet so I go for breakfast while he goes to an internet café to sort some stuff out.
Even in a country that's ninety five percent Buddist there's no escaping it!
Then we went next door to the travel agent, Greg is leaving tomorrow for Bangkok and on Thursday I am catching an early bus to Vientiane then a flight to Hanoi Vietnam
Today the sky is clear and the sun is warm so we decide to walk out to the “Blue Lagoon and Cave” something he promised me when we were here a month ago. We charge up on some coffee, grab a hat and water and start walking, it’s fifteen kilometres there and back.
We miss read a sign at some point and ended up at the wrong place (there are signs for caves and lagoons everywhere) but seeing as we were there I checked out the cave with the aid of a couple of local kids, Greg couldn’t make it up the dangerous steep track, he has a sore foot.
The cave was ok, luckily the kids had flashlights, that’s obviously how they make some money, I only went in about fifty metres but they wanted me to keep going but I’d seen enough. I imagined myself getting high jacked by these kids when we got deep into the cave and they turned their flashlights off (though I do have a torch on my iPhone) I ended up giving them a bit over a dollar between them which seemed to make them happy.
I climbed halfway up that mountain to see the first cave.
So we continued on in search of the illusive “Blue Lagoon” that I’ve been hearing so much about.
We stopped for lunch at a village that is building bungalows with tourist volunteers, reading their pamphlet it sounded like a cult. In fairness a couple of foreign investors and the village together are trying to create a quiet, natural place to stay outside of town away from the Yobbos and drugs.
You can see the cave about a thitd of the way up the mountain.
When we got there I went up to the cave for a look before a swim, Greg rested his foot. The cavern was enormous and had some really beautiful stalagmites and stalactites. There were about a dozen other people there for a while then they left and I had the whole place to myself. I hired a miners light at the bottom of the climb up but you only need that to get through the entrance and around some rocks to the main cavern. Then it opens out to a huge space with two holes in the walls that let in enough sunlight to see it all, there is a reclining Buddha mounted in the centre and there was a real “Indiana Jones” feel about it as the sunlight beamed straight in onto the gold coloured Buddha.
Buddha as liquid gold?
The below photo has people in it to give some perspective of the size of this cavern.
Buddha looks esoteric in this photo with the incense smoke rising over his form.
That's my "miners light" on the back wall in the above photo.
After indulging myself with the camera having this enormous beautiful place to myself I climbed back down and dove in the “Blue Lagoon” it was so wonderful and clean, there were fish everywhere and was just what I needed to perk me up for the walk back.
The peak on the right has some sort off structure built on it which I am utterly intruiged with.
I love these "tractors". Someone is having a feast tonight, I gather the pig in the back is about to be "prepared"
These are the mountains I usually watch the sunset from the other side.
We arrived back at sunset, a perfectly timed day. We split to our Guest Houses and showered and changed and met at the Irish bar for dinner, after which I picked up my passport and tickets from the travel agent and talked Greg into having a final drink with me at the “family guy” bar. After enough family guy we said our goodbyes, Greg went for a foot massage and I went back to my room to do some writing and sort through the two million photos I took today to whittle them down, no easy task, there was so many good ones. Today was a great day of excercise, scenery and exploration.
