The Second Chapter Closes

Another airplane ride has marked the end of the second chapter of our journey, South-East Asia. Since we flew in to Bangkok February 6th, we've gone with the wind through Thailand, Laos and Vietnam, ending with an airplane ride from Hanoi to Hong Kong March 13th. One thing has been made perfectly clear on our two days in Hong Kong so far (and more will come in the next post): We aren't in South-East Asia any more!

This post will sum up our last days in Vietnam, though, and I'll pick up where we left off - upon our return to Hanoi from Cat Ba island.

No climbing in this post, but there could have been!

We had one un-ticked box on the Vietnam agenda: A bowl of phở - traditional noodle soup - on a 

sidewalk restaurant. We'd seen the Vietnamese sitting out on tiny stools morning and evening slurping their favorite fast food dish, so we decided to find the most typical-looking one, order our phở (pronounced "fur"), and navigate our butts to the minuscule stools on the sidewalk. I tipped over backwards once before succeeding. The soup itself was among the blander meals we've had: rice noodles and cured beef is doused in a rather nondescript bouillon, and that's about it. I'm sure there are better ones than the one we got, let's just leave it at that.

My enthusiasm is rather curbed.

We'd booked a one-day tour to Ninh Binh, a province just south of Hanoi famous for its spectacular "terrestrial version of Ha Long Bay"-scenery. Having come across a bakery with proper, dark bread, we treated ourselves to our best breakfast in a long time that morning. But as we speedwalked back to the hostel for our 8:00-8:30 pickup at 8:02, we were just seconds away from being left behind by our tour bus! No harm done, though, we were off to Ninh Binh.

We've mostly stayed away from the whole tourist bus thing, but here in Vietnam we've been on a few of them now. And they all follow the same steps. Too many people, often with very different prospects and promises of what the day will be like, are crammed on to the same minibus. A barely English-speaking guide tries to start with a "joke" a la "welcome to this trip going to Sapa" (or some other totally wrong destination), but with the passengers' past experiences of confusing and badly organised tours, the joke only receives scowls. People voice their concerns, complaints and confusions, to no effect. The next stage is after about an hour in the bus, when they, under the pretence of "the driver needing to rest", send us all into a souvenir emporium for half an hour. Despite being eager to get on with the usually already delayed tour, people inevitably end up buying snacks and mild propaganda items for plenty million dong anyway. On our fourth one of these, we were pretty fed up.

Our first destination of the day was the ancient capital city of Hoa Lu'. There wasn't a whole lot to see or do there, other than have fun taking pictures and visit some un-old temples. (For the record, Vietnamese temples don't have a religious function, they are dedicated to kings or great teachers. People come to pay their respects, but not worship. The Buddhist religious sites are known as pagodas.)

Photo-fun at Hoa Lu ancient capital.

After continuing to Ninh Binh for a crappy lunch and several unnecessary waits, we were ready for the day's main attraction: A two hour rowboat trip down the Tam Coc (three caves) river. The bus ride was through some pretty dismal landscapes and ugly concrete settlements, but from the river the only views were of lush, pristine jungle and picturesque, bright green countryside. We rowed through all three of the caves - dark, spooky and low-roofed - before turning back the same way. On the way back our rower lady let us try the oars for a bit, but we both failed miserably, gaining some respect for her otherwise low-status profession.

For some reason, the rowboat rules were: 2 foreigners/boat, or 4 Vietnamese/boat.

"But there's nowhere to put my feet! And why won't it go straight?"

However, the trip kept improving as we got on bicycles and cycled through the countryside, between rice paddies, past cave-temples and climbable cliffs and people electrocute-fishing in the rivers. We got back just before dark, and had to (almost reluctantly) say ourselves satisfied with the trip all in all.

I'm on a bike!

We didn't have to leave for the airport before 2 pm. the next day, so we spent the morning (after a breakfast at the same great rye bread place) at Vietnam's Museum of Fine Arts, per recommendation from a photo-savvy Israeli from our dorm. It was really worthwhile, comprising both prehistoric bronze age crafts, paintings and sculptures from various middle age dynasties, abstract modern art, absurd communist art, and crafts and costumes of all the indigenous tribal peoples of Vietnam. It was a nice summing-up of many of Vietnam's facets, so despite our short time we felt like we'd gained a decent understanding of this far-away country.

A room full of lovely art... and a statue of Ho Chi Minh, of course.

An early 1800s Vietnamese dynasty saw sculpting arts reaching a fascinating zenith! 

When all else fails, Climb

Ha Long Bay. How does one go forth describing one of Vietnam's top tourist attractions? Most people have an image in their heads of the karst formations towering out of the sea. With guidebooks highlighting these gravity-defying stone pillars, of course we had expectations as we departed from Hanoi on Friday morning. We would, as always, learn that things are never as expected.

Our destination this morning was Cat Ba Island. Situated just outside the bay, it is free of the majority of tourists (being day-trippers), and a great place to start your exploration of the surrounding area. We booked a shuttle from our friendly guest house in Hanoi to take us to Cat Ba town, expecting, from the promises of our host, to arrive there early and still see the island the same day. In retrospect, we can now advise future travelers of never booking a trip to Cat Ba through a Hanoian travel agency. They will put you as luggage on one of their day trip boats and you will be at the tour guides' mercy of when they choose to let you of at Cat Ba. We waited for two hours docked to a couple of houses built on floating rafts, no doubt mainly for the attraction of tourists, before being put on another day trip boat heading in the direction of Cat Ba.

Admiring  (and photographing) the majestic landscape.

All the splendor on the boat, helped nothing to soothe our impatience - can we go to Cat Ba now, please?

The positive side of this of course, was that we had plenty of time to see the famous bay. The surroundings were not at all disappointing and we spent plenty of time on top of the boat taking pictures and soaking in the scenery. It's off season for tourists here in the north and we had the same overcast and thin mist that has followed us since we crossed the border. Far from being a nuisance (after all we are used to this from home) it only added to the atmosphere and gave the place a mysterious vibe. Just like the Pirates of the Caribbean as Ann Louise has so aptly described it. I myself can't help but see the similarities of Ha Long and our own fjords. The weather is one thing, but you also have the same mountains just shooting out of the ocean and rendering you minuscule in comparison. It's almost as if Norway and Ha Long are made of the same building blocks, only put together in two distinctively different ways. Oh, and our fjords aren't sprinkled with exotic, untouched, jungle.

Quiztime: Cat Ba island or a Norwegian fjord?

Even making the best of our unforeseen delay, we couldn't help but feeling deceived by the tour bookers and with so many people literally being left in the same boat as us, a mutiny was bound to emerge sooner rather than later. Three British fellows (it's always the British isn't it), having booked a three day cruise based on beautiful pictures, found themselves having to double up in a single bed, one of them with a stranger. They flatly refused this and told the tour operators they would be leaving the dodgy cruise and make their own fortune on Cat Ba. This, apparently, wasn't as straight forward as it would seem. With none of the Thai or Laotian composure, the Vietnamese made a huge scene and seemed to take offence on the entire tourist group. Luckily two unsuspecting, middle aged, Russian women disarmed the situation by being told to take the dissidents' rooms. I would definitely say the Vietnamese seem to have more of an "attitude" than the complacent Thais and Laotians, for better and for worse.

A "traditional" floating village - our two hour stop on the way to Cat Ba.

Having bonded with our fellow inmates on the boat, we found ourselves in Cat Ba hostel with three Canadian girls and a British couple. It may come as no surprise to the reader that one of our main goals on the island was to visit Butterfly Valley for some phenomenal rock climbing! Despite the overcast, we ended up spending two days on the crag, and we also got Dan the Brit and Paige the Canadian to join us, one day each, together with Josh, an experienced climber we met at the gear rental place. After these two days we really feel progress has been made, and we've had some great climbs in great company. Good times were had by all! Worth noting were also the bike rides we had the 20 minutes back and forth from the Butterfly Valley. Driving past the beautiful karsts and valleys on motorbikes was a great way to get a feel of the place and the preternatural landscape.

What are you doing up there, Thomas? It's a vertical wall for Christ's sake.

Well, if you can do it, so can I.

After two days of strenuous exercise though, it was time for a well deserved resting day. So today, apart from Thomas' heroic jogging trip, we have done nothing but sleeping, watching HBO and drinking tea under our blankets. As the weather turned sour, we prepared our return back to Hanoi. No surprise, it was a replay of our first journey, but this time we came prepared. Having already bought the tickets, there was nothing we could do and with mp3 players filled with podcasts and music, a book in one hand, and a chessboard in the other, we were ready to endure the unnecessary long journey. Did I mention a 30 minute ferry to the mainland leaves a couple of times a day? From there you can easily catch buses to Hanoi and other destinations. So I repeat: If you're ever going to Cat Ba island, do it yourself.

Hello Hanoi

We're going to Vietnam. The last leg of our South-East Asia journey and time-bound by a flight for Hong Kong the 13th, we've been squeezing our Vietnam-trip shorter and shorter, and haven't really given it much thought or research (guidebook being lost and all). But we were wrong to underestimate this country - here is a (my apologies in advance) rather lenghty account of our meeting with Vietnam.

After being fried alive in 40-degree Central Laos, the cool mist shrouding the mountain border post of Cam Treu as we approached felt very out of place. Our last 100 meters of Laos were the coldest we had there, and as we stamped out and crossed in to No Man's Land, it just got colder, and the mist just got thicker. We really should have had pictures from this absurd scene: there was not a person in sight, we just kept walking deeper and deeper in to Vietnam with no passport stamp, no consent from anyone. We walked on to a long bridge whose end we couldn't see for all the mist, continued up a long hill, not meeting a soul. After a long while we started seeing spade-wielding ditch-diggers drenched from the relentless drizzle, and finally: a bleak concrete building with the word "Immigration" on it. Timidly we pushed the unlocked door open, and started poking around the narrow corridors of the building, seeing only empty concrete nooks and curtains fluttering over shattered windows. Deeming the building deserted and thoroughly creepy, we moved on.

A last look at impossibly rugged karst mountains and delightfully strong sun in Laos.

At the border crossing just a half hour later. Somewhere there in the gray lies Vietnam.

After more spooky walking past half-finished constuction work, we met three neatly uniformed guys along the road. They asked for our passports and looked at them for a while as if they'd never seen a passport before, flicking through the pages for our Vietnamese visas, which we didn't have, as Norway is one of few countries whose citizens Vietnam doesn't require visas for. But this was way more knowledge than we expected uniformed border guards to have, and we had no way of communicating it to them as their English was limited to three-or-so words. Luckily we had printed our plane ticket from Hanoi to Hong Kong, since a border guard who knew what he was doing probably would have liked to see our confirmed departure ticket from Vietnam. In this case, though, it served more as "some sort of official-looking document in a foreign language", and we had changed from our grubby traveling clothes to jeans and nice shirts just before the border, so we had accumulated enough authority to be waved along with a smile.

Still stamp-less and now even deeper in to Vietnam, roughly the same scene played out one or two more times - the officials still not speaking a word of English or telling us what to do, and the e-mail print-out working its magic repeatedly - before we finally got to a building with people in it. They gave us our stamps for a modest 1 USD, and sent us further down the road. This road was obviously one we were expecting to be crowded with taxis and buses taking us to Vinh, the nearest major town some 100 km away, but after a long time we found only one driver - albeit friendly - and in lack of other options, we let him take us to a town 30 km down the spectacular mountain road (hello Norwegian scenery), where we connected with a bus already departing for Vinh.

The countryside views of off-the-beaten-track Vietnam were a bit shocking. Nowhere on our travels have we seen so many people living so primitively. Rice fields are tended in the same postcard way that they have for hundreds of years, and farms are run completely engineless, all labour done by hand, in this strictly communist country which simply decided to ignore the technological advancements of the 1900s.

Arriving in rainy Vinh at dusk, we had only ten minutes again before the night bus for Hanoi left. Having been whisked continuosly along for the better part of the day, we spent those minutes frantically searching for a snack of any kind, and ended up champing down dry baguettes in our beds as the bus departed. The beds were delightful, and having caught a bit of a stomach bug somewhere in Laos, I feel in to an unnaturally deep sleep, expecting not to be woken before the next day. But Hanoi arrived just after 1 am, and before I knew it we were dropped off on a highway somewhere in Vietnam's multi-million capital, still recovering from sleep and without a clue as to where we were.

Very ready for a long night's sleep.

We let an annoying taxi driver take us to a part of town we'd never heard of. Unable to find us an open hotel, he left us in the hands of a hooker on a motorbike, who we paid out of the ears to find us an open hotel (and nothing else). Eventually she succeeded, and we conked out on mouldy beds.

Sorry for the rather lengthy story, but there was a lot that had to be said about our first meeting with Vietnam. I'll be briefer and more picturey for the actual Hanoi part.

A main Hanoi impression: Oceans of motorbikes.

It was past 2 pm the next day before we had summoned the energy to start exploring Hanoi. We had been taken straight to the old town surrounding the scenic Hoan Kiem lake, and enjoyed wandering the motorcycle-filled streets and browsing the fascinatingly varied handicrafts stores. We visited the Temple of Literature, the charming site of a 1000 year old Confuscian university, and went to a water-puppet show in the evening, for a mildly enjoyable hour of traditional Vietnamese culture. Our first impression of Hanoi is friendly and interesting, but the streets got deserted and chilly in the evening.

Every doctor graduate from the school has a stela carried on the back of the symbolic stone turtle.
Side by side are stones from the 1400s and 1700s.

The puppeteers receiving applause from the few of us in the audience who are still awake.

Hoan Kiem lake, the epicenter of Hanoi's tourist district and mild exercise area.

The next morning we got up early to see Ho Chi Minh's mausoleum, the top attraction of the city. We joined a kilometer-long (but sufficiently fast-moving) queue winding its way around the imposing grounds, before being led, under strict supervision, in a procession around Uncle Ho's embalmed body. It was a fascinating experience, just for the intense devotion the Vietnamese still showed for their old hero, and we visited the ridiculously patriotic Ho Chi Minh museum afterwards. Our next stop was the Hoa Lo prison, a famously bleak place built by the French colonists, but later used by the Vietnamese during the "American War", as they call it, and now a museum. In both places we managed to tease out some interesting pieces of history from all the communist propaganda, but it wasn't always easy. If there's one thing Vietnam has taught us it is how incredibly biased history really is, and although we can ridicule their presentation of American prisoners receiving presents, playing volleyball and eating Christmas dinner (with the gruesome torture methods being passed elegantly by), they've opened our eyes to that the "version" of history we're used to isn't necessarily accurate either.

Imposingly housed and defying his own death wish, Ho's body is practically a religious artifact.

Because nothing says freedom like pictures of people carrying flowers.

A guard telling us where to walk and not to walk in the grounds of the mausoleum complex.

Exhausted from sightseeing and wandering streets, we get to a big mall with a movie theater and book tickets for The Book Thief. While passing time before the show we frolicked in an extravagant gaming arcade, just for the heck of it. And that's about all we got around to in Hanoi before leaving for the famous Ha Long Bay.

Secrets old and new

It's now been over a week since we entered the fascinating land of the Lao People's Democratic Republic. We have been all over and I have had no opportunity to write down our experiences for you to read, but believe me, there have been many. Recalling seemingly distant memories now is no easy feat, but I will do my best, so stay a while, and listen as I tell the first part of our travels through the Land of a Million Elephants.

From our experience a big part of the impression you get of a place stems from how you arrived there. If you fly in to the Himalayas it feels less distant and exotic than if you take a bus across narrow mountain passes on bumpy roads. Therefore, to get the real jungle feel, we decided to kick off our journey into the unknown with a two-day boat ride down the Mekhong river. After smooth processing at the border we took a Songthaew to Huay Xai, the docking village, and immediately we noticed this wasn't Thailand. The roads we're more bumpy and less crowded than what we were used to. Laos has a population of 6.6 million, compared to Thailand's 66 million. We were also confused with the right hand driving after seeing it British-imperial style for the last two months. Generally, Laos' populated areas look pretty much what we imagine Thailand looked like 20 years ago. Practically time-travelling!

The boat ride was just as scenic and peaceful as we had imagined. Two seven hour rides over two days took us through a cascade of rolling hills, jungle and beautiful images of the life along the Mekhong. Every now and then children would play on the rocks in the river, fishermen would fish from shore or by boat, and villagers would wash clothes or just enjoy life by the riverside. Sometimes the peace was broken by deadly longtail speedboats shipping passengers to Luang Prabang in only 6 hours. Imagine what they were missing holding on for their life as they passed the beautiful landscape at near light speed! We would pass the time by reading, writing, chatting up neighboring passengers or just watching the landscape and thinking about how this was a pretty cool place to be.

A beautiful day on the Mekhong comes to an end.

Our serenity was also put to a halt at our overnight stay in Pak Beng. This small village had been tainted by the high influx of daily tourists arriving with our boat. We found the staff at the guest house to be rude and impatient with familliar glimpses of dollar signs in their eyes. A stark contrast from the overly polite Thais and what we expected from their neighbors. A cool surprise was seeing two elephants on the other side of the river on the morning of departure. Now, heading for the Vietnamese border, I'm still 999,998 elephants short of the promised million.

Our blissful ride was not without its hazards. We stayed away from the open engine during business hours.

Luang Prabang came floating down the river on Tuesday afternoon, and we soon found ourselves in a guesthouse filled up with friends from the boat ride. This was also a recurring event during our two nights stay in Luang Prabang. Whether we were walking past the French-colonial hovels and croissant bakeries, or eating at the fascinating street food market, we would always meet familiar faces from the boat. This instantly caused a bond between us and we soon felt we knew everyone in town. For surely, this was a tourist town. We could see it everywhere. Our main watering hole was Utopia (for us at least, maybe not for the monks in the nearby Wat). The atmosphere and the people there was really cool, but the place was a copy of similar places we've been to in other countries, and there wasn't anything specifically Laotian about it. One day we woke early to watch the traditional Buddhist ceremony where monks collect alms from people on the street. Alas, our view, from a respectable distance, was obscured by camera lenses showering the poor monks in a blitz-rain. The monks in Luang Prabang had allegedly asked to be excused from the ceremony, but had been ordered by the government to continue. The same government that 30 years ago, after the revolution, forbade alms collecting or any kind of "excessive religious ceremonies". Interesting.

The best meal for a buck we have encountered yet!

Monks in the morning. No paparazzi in this view though.

Hm. That paragraph may have come out a little negative. Luang Prabang really was a fantastic place to visit. The town was beautiful, we met wonderful people, and the trip to the nearby waterfall was fantastic! Photographing, a hike to the top through the jungle, and a swim in one of the many lagoons (check), left us revitalized and ready for new adventures. However, we needed to get off the backpacker highway to Vientiane through Vang Vieng altogether and headed eastward to the desolate town of Phonsavan and the Plain of Jars.

Several spots like this got us excited at first...

...but the main attraction came at the top!

Here's a not-so-fun fact for you. Laos is the most heavily bombed country on earth. From 1964 to 1973 American forces dropped around 2 million tons of bombs over the eastern part of Laos - a bomb every 8 minutes for nine years! Breaking international law, secret supply lines to the Vietnamese were targeted, but also leftover bombs from failed missions were dropped over an empty plain so the planes didn't have to land with ordnance. Except the plain wasn't empty. Xieng Khouang, the province of Phonsavan and the Plain of Jars, was completely decimated from the bombings and has been crippled ever since, as has several other parts of Laos. We came to Phonsavan to see the mysterious limestone Jars scattered across the rolling hills. It was fascinating to wander among this over 3000 year old pottery for giants. Though there are many theories, nobody really knows where they came from and a paraphrase of the great Samuel L. Jackson comes to mind: "Who the hell put these god damn jars on this god damn plain!?" (censored for family-friendliness)

Mysteriousness is very mysterious!

Since many of the jar sites are very scenic locations, one theory is that
they were for dead bodies.

Barrel-riding! Over barrel...

...and under barrel!

Though the jars were a sight in themselves, the plain also had more modern history. Right next to the historic jars were bomb craters and trenches, and only 7 of the around 50 sites were cleared of unexploded ordnances (UXO) and open to the public. 30 % of the small "bombies" inside the cluster bombs never detonated and remain a deadly threat to people today. We learned a lot about the work around the UXO and we visited two organizations working with this: The Mines Advisory Group (MAG) and UXO Survivor Information Center. MAG is the organization tasked with clearing the land of the deadly mines, and the UXO Survivor Information Center does the vital job of rehabilitating the many victims of UXO and making their transition back into society possible. We saw many heartbreaking witness accounts and learned of the important job these organizations do. (Links for the organizations will be provided at the bottom of the post) We also saw a very interesting movie: The most secret place on earth is about Americans and the CIA's involvement in what is called the Secret War. Because the movie is banned by the government, we had to put on a decoy movie before the police stopped by, and then put on the real one!

Although we have seen the desperation and horror that follows with war, the forthcoming and friendly locals have kind of adapted to having weapons of mass destruction all around them. The huge bomb casings could be found all around town - as decorations, as stilts to set up houses, and even as boats, shuttling people across the small rivers. A literal meaning of the phrase: Making swords into plowshares.

Cluster-bomb shells. Each of these could contain about 300 bombies.

Phonsavan town was a neat place to visit in its own right.

We have now, after a 24 hour do-it-ourselves transit marathon with every type of transportation available under the sun, made it to Hanoi, the capital of Vietnam. Before leaving we swiftly died and went to climbing heaven in Tha Khaek, and it's been a week since Phonsavan, but Laos has really made a lasting impression. I still find myself thinking of the inspiring way the locals there have dealt with a hopeless situation. Other impressions looking back at our Laos trip have been the relentlessly stunning scenery making even the tenth cramped bus ride enjoyable, delicious food blending French, Thai and Vietnamese flavors, friendly co-travelers both on and off the backpacker trail, and a slight regret that we have rather limited time.

Now we're heading out to explore Hanoi, and we promise an update from here before too long!

Links:

The Most Secret Place On Earth - documentary on America's "Secret War" in Laos.
Mines Advisory Group's work in Laos - these guys really make a difference, employing local people in mine clearing work, and deserve all the money they can get.
Cooperative Orthotic and Prosthetic Enterprise (COPE) - Giving UXO victims in Laos a future.

Helm's Deep

Due to technical issues, the recounts of the eventful first half of our Laos adventure will have to wait a few days, and the latest news will have to do for now.

The second half of our Laos adventure can be summed up in two words - karst formations - but not enough pictures. Nevertheless, here are a few to get you started.

Spoiler alert: This is basically what Laos looks like...

... Flat and desolate - I mean, whenever there aren't sick mountains everywhere.

As part of our climbing-in-every-country project, we had originally set out the party and adventure capital of Laos, Vang Vieng, as our next destination after Luang Prabang, and even with our side step to Phonsavan (more on all these weird-named places in the next post!), we could easily have backtracked there. However, the climbers' buzz in Chiang Mai brought a new destination to our attention: Tha Khaek. Rumors were that you lived right at the foot of the mountains, and just walked five minutes to any of the walls in one of South-East Asia's largest climbing areas, and they were all spectacular. We were further enthused by the presence of the Kong Lor caves, which according to our now lost guidebook was the number 2 experience in all of Laos (after Luang Prabang, so the number 1 of experiences yet to be had), and the fact that the road there from Phonsavan was only a dotted line on the map and described as "slow but spectacular", so we jumped on the southbound bus.

Well, neither the high-quality scenery or low-quality road gave me any lasting sensory impressions, as I was suffering from an intense one-day fever (from an unlucky bite of food in Phonsavan) and slept through most of the bus ride. As we smoothly switched buses in Paksan on the other side of the mountains, the temperature had soared to 38°C, and even arriving in Tha Khaek in the evening we were sweaty and sticky. 

Tha Khaek mixes Paris, communism and cowboys impeccably.

Tha Khaek is a strange-looking town. Straight-roadedly Sovjet and dustily Wild West like Phonsavanh, it seems like no place for faded-pastel French colonial villas, but that's what it's full of. Our Thai SIM-cards plinged back in to action; the town leans over the Mae Khong towards the Thai border. But despite new places to explore, in my state I wasn't up for more than perusing Kong Lor-options from brochures and eating some steamed rice. Planning things doesn't seem realistic when you're sick, especially distant caves and 38°C-climbing, but we decided to see what a 12-hour sleep would do before panicking. Sure enough, I was good as new the next morning, and we headed for the fabled caves.

We arrived in the isolated Kong Lor village after a slightly overlong bus and sorngthau ride. It is absurdly situated at the very end of a dead-end road; every escape route from the seemingly welcoming plain is gradually blocked by towering cliffs rising up from the flat ground at 90° angles - cliffs that furthermore are topped by pitch-black, jagged orc-helmet spikes. It would have been worth spending the day going there even without the fabled limestone caves at the end! But listen: The caves are seven kilometers long, 30 meters wide and 20 to 100 meters tall, and you ride a motorized  wooden canoe at breakneck speeds down the rocky and curvy river that runs all the way through it, only getting off to walk by headlight through a forest of stalagmites and stalactites or to portage the canoe over limestone rapids! We were all by ourselves in the canoe with our driver, and we hardly passed other people the whole journey through the caves. Super spooky and SO cool! Besides, when you get out on the other side the river drifts you directly below towering mountains with vertical cliffs for I don't know but it must have been hundreds of meters. And an unreasonably warm wind brushed your face, the lush jungle leans over your canoe, and there's absolutely no doubt in your mind that you've passed a wormhole and traveled to the dinosaur age of some other dimension.

These things are cool!

And there's many of them!

First light after 7 kilometers of darkness!

These things are also cool!

The cave exit is cool, the fact that the trip is over is so uncool!

Speaking of sending your imagination flying, how could this valley not be Helm's Deep and the cave not be Gollum's lair under the Misty Mountains? And doesn't this boat remind you uncannily of a certain cave in Harry Potter 6?!

I look behind me and find not Alex, but Dumbledore!

Our driver portaging the canoe past some rapids... I mean, going Gollum-hunting.

The rainforest looks embarrassed to be stripped of its understory.

Back in the village (we got to see the whole thing over again on the way back - weee!) we wanted to spend a night with a local family in the village - an option known as "homestay" that has been getting quite popular with travelers. We wandered down the dirt lane of the primitive village, watching villagers grinding flour in a mill and building canoes, and we didn't have much difficulty finding a family who would take us in. However, "homestay" turned out to be the only word of English they spoke. Formalities, questions, even introductions posed a formidable communication problem, however entertaining it was. We thought we deduced that we should go to a restaurant to get supper, so we did, but when we returned (after sitting for a long time talking to friendly fellow travelers) they brought out a lovely tray of food for us. Feeling a bit guilty for returning so late, we ate as best we could, smiling wide the whole time. Our place was home to three generations of family, from more kids than I could count to the two exceptionally hunchbacked elders (the female of which took great care to always serve us chilled water). A corner of the living room was hastily cleaned out for us, and they graciously provided us with mattresses, blankets and a mosquito net - way more than we had expected. Still, so much more fun than a resort!

About half of the host family, half of its guests, and half of the dog.

Numerous cock-a-doodle-doos accompany this daybreak photo.

This morning after feeding us breakfast, sending us cucumbers and sticky rice for the road, and agreeing to a couple photos, our family bade us many farewells and we were off back to Tha Khaek. Stoked on adventures now, we immediately sorngthaued out to the climbing spot to check it out. Behold, another Helm's Deep awaits, but it's not as remote, and at the bottom isn't a primitive village, but a climber's paradise: A campground riddled with slacklines, cheap huts, a fanned chill-out restaurant and a climbing gear rental depot. The cliffs surrounding it on three sides are even more imposing than in Kong Lor, and there are all kinds of climbs. Since renting equipment is full-day price, we decide to have lunch, go back to town to catch up on some seriously overdue blogging, and spend the whole day there tomorrow. Needless to say I can't wait!

Climbing vacation, anyone?

The Elephant wall  up close...

... and from a distance.

One last mountain shot from Helm's Deep to see you over the wait.