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March 02, 2005
Laos | Vang Vieng and Caving | 8-11 Feb 2005
The next day, the 3 of us hired some bicycles and went 6km to the most well-known cave in the area. The ride there was interesting, with wonderful countryside to look at. The Lao people are quite on-the-ball with tourists in Vang Vieng, providing English signposts and impressively stable bridges – at a cost. Each bridge has a toll of around $0.50 per bicycle – that was an interesting example of user-pays, but at least they were keeping the bridges in good order.
We also managed to pick up some extremely young hitchhikers while we were on our way to the caves…
The main attraction of the cave we went to was not, in fact, the cave, but the sparkling lagoon at the bottom of the hill. It had a bridge, a swing, tables and chairs, and even a small local restaurant. It felt like a great place for a weekend picnic.
The cave was a significant walk up the mountain, and once there, was, primarily, a cave.
The ride home was, well, interesting, to say the very least… Lets see if you guys can spot what’s missing from this photo (click on it for bigger pic, as with all other photos)…
Mmm, found it?
Maybe this one will help…
Ahhh…. There we go. Yes, it was, in fact, a very interesting ride home. I managed to actually ride it as well, one-footed. It wasn’t easy, seeing as it had the free-back-rotating mechanism, which meant that half the time I tried to kick it up to push down, the single remaining pedal would just fall back down to the bottom, useless. I had many strange looks on the way back, not least from Silke, who remained at my speed to keep me company. (Then again, I was going a lot faster than her down the hill – weight-momentum advantage, hurrah!)
Again another night on the Beerlao, again ending up at Ilam bar, where much fun was to be had.
Posted by Dan at March 2, 2005 08:49 AM
Comments
Silke!?
Posted by: lozza at March 2, 2005 10:04 AM
Silke being one of the German girls, Sandra the other
Posted by: Dan at March 3, 2005 01:00 PM