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Days 47 - 49 Nong Khiaw - Muang Nuou - Vieng Tong - Vieng Xai
Our tour began at 7am in the morning from Luang Prabang, we met the other guys in the tour and headed north in our very fetching orange bus.
First stop was Nong Khiaw, a sleepy picturesque town on the banks of the river, from there we headed further north up the river to Muang Nuou which is only accessible by boat, the boat ride was fantastic taking in great views of water buffalos and river life. Muang Nuou is fairly remote so there was only 3 hours electricity in the evening and no hot water, which made showers pretty chilly! We spent the evening getting to know the rest of the guys on the tour over a few cocktails and the ever present beerlao.
The next day we got up early to take the boat further up the river to go and see a remote cave which is only accessible during the dry season when the river is at its lowest. We took our torches and climbed up into the cave with a local guide, we then walked along what would usually be an underwater river bed. Once in the cave you had the impression no one had ever been before which made it all the more interesting. The only issue we (I) had was that the floor of the cave was made of slippy mud and this combined with the lack of traction on my flip flops and my general lack of ability meant I spent most of the time sliding on my backslide whilst the rest of the group looked at me as if I was the class idiot...which I was.
Once we made it out of the cave and I had stopped falling over, we headed back to Nong Khaiw where we picked up the bus and continued our journey west towards Vietnam.
The next stop was Vieng Tong, which is even more remote than our previous destination to the extent that the locals rarely seen westerners, as a result whenever we walked passed the children would get scared start crying and run and hide...lucky this is the reaction Tina usually gets from kids so it wasn't too much of a shock for her. The town also possesses some hot springs so in the evening we headed down to the hot springs to boil some eggs in the water, which was pretty cool. That evening we headed to a local market for dinner and saw rat on a skewer, no one in our group was brave enough to try it ....
The next day we were back on the bus and on our way to Vieng Xai which is very close to the border with Vietnam. On the way to Vieng Xai we made a couple of stops, the first stop was at a very remote village, where once again we scared lots of children. We then hired a local from the village to take us up into the hills to visit and ancient archaeological site called the Hintang. The site is made up for a number of tall limestone and granite slabs that run along a hill top 12km ridge, the slabs have been dated at 2000 years old but due to the fact Laos has only recent open up to the west only a handful of westerners have ever visited the site and as a result it is not understood why the slabs are there or where they came from.
We eventually reached Vieng Xai in the late afternoon, the town important to Lao because it was the birthplace of the Lao communist revolution and was heavily bombed during the secret war between the USA and Laos. The town itself is very picturesque as it is surrounded by tall limestone rocks, almost like a Halong bay but on land.
In the evening we spotted a group of local kids playing footy across from the hotel so me and a German guy on our tour headed over to ask if we could play. While we struggled to keep up with a group of 10 year old Lao kids the girls in our group decided to try out some circus tricks led by Amber, one of the girls on our bus who had had some previous training. The sight of a group of westerners standing on each other and holding each other up with their feet soon took the attention away from the football as all the local kids flocked to watch us make fools out of ourselves...the kids seemed to love it...I'm fairly sure it wasn't an everyday occurrence for them! Eventually we headed back to the hotel to get ready for dinner but as we walked out we noticed all the local kids were now trying to copy all the moves and tricks we had been doing which was really cool to see!
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