To the Bat Cave!

So, here I am in the middle of nowhere central Laos on an excursion to see Kong Lo, a limestone cave that involves hiring a boat to see it. This is about all I know about it, that and I have to take a sawngthaew (tuk tuk) for about 45 minutes to get there. My 'knowledgeable' host arranged for me to be picked up at 10am, so I hung around reading and awaiting my ride. At 9:45am she comes up to me and says "I think he forgot"

Riiiight.

So I jump on the back of her scooter and we ride into town to jump on a local transport there.

"OK, how do I get back?" I ask

"Yes, yes, you get back"

[something in Lao to the driver]

[he says something back]

[both laugh hysterically]

So I'm in a truck with 12 locals, plus 4 calves' feet and misc other bovine body parts, large heavy packages wrapped in plastic, and 4 jerry cans of petrol. As I get into the truck I hear "[blah blah blah Falang blah blah] [blah!blah blah Falang blah!] [laughter]"

*Falang, you'll remember, means white dude

A few minutes later an old man says to me "Tu parle francais?"

Uhhhh....oui....un peu [Forgot about this whole Laos-as-former-French-colony thing]

He asked me a few questions but he was quite hard to understand over the roar of the engine, and my French wasn't good enough to ask questions of him.

An hour later we've delivered the petrol, stopped for homemade whiskey - which I was offered, but politely declined (merci, mais seulement apres midi!), and dropped off all passengers. At the end of the line I was ushered down a pathway leading to the Kong Lo cave, to a clearing where there were about 10 locals lazing around in hammocks and playing petanque next to a sign:

BOAT COMMITTEE

Hah!

The committee was, shall we say, less than proactive in issuing instructions as to what exactly one does to organise this boat cruise, but I finally worked out where to buy a ticket, was issued with a life jacket (no doubt mandated by section 7 off the boat committee's safety sub committee charter) and 2 guyes started wandering towards a thin boat. Right, then, guess I'm to follow them. Standing there waiting for direction, or the boat to ruck up, I was admittedly wondering how the boat was going to go from the beach area actually into the cave, given there was a tiny waterfall between the boat and the cave opening. One of my boat captains looks at me like I'm an idiot and waves me down a path towards the cave entrance.

It's about this point that I start thinking...wait a second...I've come all this way to visit a CAVE? I don't even like caves!

Not exactly sure what I missed in the guidebook's description of Kong Lo as being "a 7 kilometer river through a cave" to make me think it was something else...perhaps I was so enamoured with their description of the Mi Thuna guest house that I missed the details of why I was actually there. At any rate trepidation started to set in as another thought occurs to me:

There are bats in caves. I hate bats.

Sure enough as soon as I thought it, as if the little flying fanged rats could read my mind, I hear the shrieks and whoosh of tiny wings overhead. Well, I guess I got myself into this, I'd best follow through.

So I'm in a boat with 2 boatmen and my pathetic excuse for a headlamp. We advance into the dark cave as a 2 stroke engine powers us through the river system. The ceiling height (do caves have ceilings? How the hell would I know) is so tall that I never felt claustrophobic - which is really my issue with caves, besides the whole bat thing. In another rush of irrational panic it occurred to me that with so few people around and no way out except this boat, these 2 boatmen could be raving lunatic rapist-murderers and I would be completely at their mercy as I'm several kilometers down a river in the middle of pitch blackness.

After picturing myself gang raped by 2 Lao boatmen and then being left for dead for the vampire bats to eat my rotting carcass, I acknowledged to myself that train of thought was a wee bit silly and began to relax into the trip. In reality, of course, they were lovely people though with their limited English we weren't able to communicate. Perhaps 5 times we had to get out and wade through the river (thanks to their super-strong headlamps and no thanks to mine). Each time they grabbed my hand and guided me to a standing spot so they could push the boat through shallow water, making sure I was all right first.

We went to a viewing platform of stalag...whatevers....and finished our tour out the other side of the mountain at a cafe before heading back in. It was such a long river system, in such darkness, that we could have come out in Burma and I would have believed it.

Overall, it was great to get into the countryside and away from most tourists - there were still a fair few around but the area wasn't crawling with them. I feel like I have seen more of 'real' Laos in having this little adventure, even if it did take 2 days of public transport buses afterwards to get back on the tourist track! Cliche, I know, but sometimes it is indeed the journey more than the destination (though the destination *was* pretty impressive in this case, too).