Spelunking in Vang Vieng

With the massive limestone cliffs everywhere and all the advice to go caving while in Laos, how could we resist a day of spelunking? Frank was suffering from food poisoning (or drinking too much dirty river water while tubing… we still aren’t sure which!), so he and Lauren opted out of today’s adventure. Matt and Alex however rented bikes and joined us on our journey to the Phou Kham Cave and the Blue Lagoon. The road out of town quickly progressed from pavement to gravel to mud with potholes the size of small children and mud puddle deeper than the foot pedals of our bikes.

With only a few very close calls, we made it to the base of the cave, parked, and started up the ridiculously steep stairs (that were much taller than they were wide) to the mouth of the cave. Standing at the top of the stairs, we were all amazed at the gaping hole in the side of the cliff that was today’s adventure. Stupidly, none of us had thought to bring flashlights (or torches, as our English friends call them), but we were intelligent enough to rent one headlamp to share between the four of us. The visible part of the cave from the top was larger than any we had ever been in, and that was only the beginning: the cave just kept snaking back into the mountains, and we went as far as we possibly could without getting ourselves into any sticky situations. The cave was decorated with stalactites and stalagmites, columns and pillars, water in puddles and dripping from the high ceiling, and many others exploring the vast network of tunnels. We tried to take a few pictures, but they will never do the cave justice!

After a few hours of spelunking and sweating, we walked back down the “stairs” to the Blue Lagoon at the bottom of mountain. The lagoon is fed by a mountain spring and therefore much, much cooler than the water of other rivers and so refreshing. We all thought it was supposed to be cooler inside caves, but this wasn’t the case for today and we bathed in the cool waters of the turquoise pond. With the vibrantly green grass nearby and the deep blue sky speckled with the perfect number of clouds above, we enjoyed ourselves thoroughly. There were more rope swings and a few overhanging trees to jump off of. Upstream a little ways, there were trees that none of us would think to climb and jump out of but a handful of Lao boys were doing just that. They climbed more like monkeys that humans, and had absolutely no fear and were quite excited to have an audience with cameras.

Back in town, Alex booked his hellish 24 hour bus ticket to Vietnam, Frank and Lauren decided to spend another day in Vang Vieng to see the caves, and Matt, Justin, and I booked our kayak/minibus trip to Vientiane for the next day. We had a massive picture, blog, and information swap before heading out to our last dinner as a group.