Vientiane Laos, day one. One evening stroll through the capital city. One delicious evening meal that passed through me very quickly 24 hours later. Four hour bus trip north on a local bus sitting next to a Laos student of 23 who was surprised (and maybe disappointed?) that I was 30.
That is very very old for an unmarried woman in SE Asia. The stock answer to "are you married?", which is asked of you by every native man, woman and child that you meet is "not yet." I think it buys you a little time before you are a classified spinster.
Vang Viang Laos, day two. Stayed at the first available hotel, sure to get a room on the highest floor. It was a big room on the edge of town. My window overlooked rusted aluminum rooftops and the town's airstrip, an enormous blacktop parking lot. But it was quiet and clean and had hot water. It was also a whopping $3/night.
The thing to to in Vang Viang is to visit caves. There are lots of them, some of them short distances out of town. Others long distances out of town. I selected one that was a long distance out of town -- 6km -- and thought it would be better to walk than rent a bicycle. The night before, thunderstorms rolled over the mountains, drenched the town and cooled it off. The morning was cool, the sun hidden behind light gray cloud cover and the dirt roads were muddy in spots with brown puddles.
By the time I made it to the cave, the sun didn't feel like it was really hidden behind the cover of clouds. I applied sun block twice, which made me sweat double. But the walk, it did me good. I shook off the bus ride of the day before and got me legs sore enough to take the rest of the day off, get a good night's rest and spend the next day on another long bus ride north. The walk was peaceful. I passed thatched houses that looked like they were collapsing back to the ground. I passed other stronger houses built of wood with windows and raised on stilts or brick foundations. At 11am, the children got out of school. They walked home, some paired off and other alone, the boys in front bantering and swinging their schoolbags with the confidence of children celebrating the completion of one more schoolweek. I passed water buffaloes clustered in a deep puddle, sunken up to their necks and rolling in the water. I passed men driving vehicles that looked like lawnmowers with wagons attached. The wagons had bench seats where families being shuttled to and from town would sit, women steadied their children's head against their breasts as the wagon bumped and vibrated down the road.
The cave itself was unspectacular. The climb up to the cave was vertical up rocks with only natural handholds in the rocks themselves or a thin bamboo rail wedged between trees to hold onto on the ascent. I met up with a Danish couple and we climbed together. The cave was dark. No artificial lights to show us the way and no guide to lead us through the cave, we climbed up and down places that made us feel like we could fall and end our trip at any moment. We looked down dark holes with our flashlights, then let prudence win and climbed back out the cave, shimmied back down the mountain.
I washed my face in the strip of turquoise water that ran past the base of the cave. I crossed over the little bamboo footbridge and started the walk back to town, six more kilometers and three more bamboo footbridges to go.
