Laos Part IV: Na Hin and Tham Kong Lor

Frustrated with our experience at the travel agency and ready to move on to our next destination, Shanti and I headed for the Luang Prabang airport to get back to Vientiane. We stumbled upon a tuk-tuk at a standstill with a passenger inside; the driver offered a lift anyway. Our company to the airport was a fascinating Turkish character who had just opened a guesthouse and we just happened to be interrupting his downtime with his favorite driver. He spoke with a thick accent and in a sing-song voice as he offered cynical observations of life in Southeast Asia. The next leg of our journey was off to a good start.

After a quick overnight in Vientiane, we set off for Na Hin, a small town a few hours south and a bit inland from the main road. To get there, we took a bus to the crossroad that headed inland, hopped out, and joined about ten others in the back of a converted pickup truck, or sawngthew as they're known locally. As we headed inland, the scenery became more and more beautiful, as jagged limestone cliffs reached out from flat farmland to touch the pale blue sky. Unfortunately, our view was obstructed a bit by being in the back of the pickup.

We arrived in quiet, remote, and beautiful Na Hin in early afternoon and got a room at Mi Thuna, a guesthouse highly recommended by Lonely Planet. We were hoping to go to Tham Kong Lor cave - a monstrous cave 300 feet wide, 300 feet tall and five miles long with a river running the length through a limestone mountain - that afternoon, but we were a bit short on time, so we borrowed bicycles and went into "town" to look around. In a small tourist information center, we inquired about getting to the cave. We were told there were only two ways to go: to rent a moto at 100,000 kip (about $11) or to take a sawngthew at 11am and spend a night in a village. We didn't have time to do the latter, so we opted for the former, but went looking around for a cheaper place to rent a moto. We spent the afternoon just relaxing. Playing cards, reading, and enjoying the sunset over the limestone mountains along with an extremely popular Beer Lao.

We woke early the next morning and set off on a moto rented from the owner of the guesthouse. The road was new and the scenery was gorgeous. A valley of electric green rice fields flanked on every side by lush and jagged limestone cliffs. About halfway there, and driving through a village, a chicken jumped into the middle of road, practically underneath the front tire of the moto. My natural instinct was to swerve and avoid it, but on the gravel road, we instantly skidded out.

It all happened in the blink of an eye and, even now, I have trouble recalling what actually happened. The first thing I remember, after making sure Shanti was ok, was practically the entire village swarming around us to make sure we were ok, to move the moto out of the road, collecting the peg that had broken off (the one the passenger puts their foot on), and running to get a bottle of UN-issued iodine and cotton balls. We both had some pretty good scrapes, but thankfully, nothing more serious. We cleaned ourselves off with the iodine, cotton balls, and the antiseptic wipes we had and pondered whether we should return to Na Hin or go on to the cave. After a short discussion, we decided on the cave.

We set off slowly, but hopeful that the cave was going to be worth the trouble. After about forty-five minutes (at about 8:15) we arrived in front of a sign indicating we were indeed at Tham Kong Lor. But there was no one around save a few kids who were chatting, fishing and swimming. Neither our paltry Laos, nor our slightly more advanced charades were able to get us any information about where to find a boat and a guide to lead us through. Though a bit concerned that no one was around, we enjoyed the beautiful pool at the caves entrance and used the opportunity to clean ourselves off a bit more.

After about fifteen minutes some men appeared with professional looking headlamps and wooden longboats. We followed them on a short hike to the entrance of the cave and then descended down a set of steps carved into the limestone. We watched another pair of boatmen, drag their wooden longboat into the cave over a waterfall. As we descended into the cave, down carved limestone steps, guided only by the light from the cave entrance and a weak headlamp, bats swirling around our heads, it got much cooler. We arrived at the boat as our guides were charging the batteries of their headlamps in the near pitch black. And then we were off.

The boat moved slowly through the cold, shallow, water. Only once we rounded a bend that put us completely out of sight of the light of the entrance, did we really begin to appreciate the magnitude of the cave. The echo of the boat's motor, the sound and feel of water around us and the beams of headlamps flashing left and right were the only things to prevent us from thinking that we were not in a cavernous bottomless pit. Of our two guides, one sat in the front, navigating; when he noticed shallow water, he would point either left or right, in the direction of deeper water, instructing our other guide, at the back of the boat, which way to go. As it was, we still had to get out and walk a bit, not the easiest thing to do in a fast flowing river with a slippery and rocky bottom in limited light.

At one point, we stopped, following one of the guides up a steep and slippery limestone embankment. He led us a dazzling display of stalagmites and stalactites. On our way down, I pointed at a spider I saw under the guide's headlamp. He grabbed a rock, darted over to it, made some sort of a biting symbol, and then smashed it with a dead-on throw of the rock. Turns out it wasn't a spider, but a fairly poisonous scorpion. Lovely.

We carried on simply in awe of how big the cave was and how small we felt. After over an hour of near total darkness, we saw a light in front of us. Before we could exit the cave, though, we had to pull the boat up a small waterfall. The first time failed miserably as the boat filled completely with water and had to be let downstream so it could be emptied. Once we did emerge, though, Shanti and I both gasped in awe, much to the amusement of our guides. It was tremendously beautiful.

We floated upstream for a few minutes, enjoying the surroundings, before heading back through the cave. Despite the moto accident, this was definitely the highlight of the trip thus far and well worth the trouble. Absolutely beautiful and off the tourist track enough that it felt, to an extent, as if we were discovering the cave for the first time.

We moto-ed back to Na Hin without incident, that is, until we got there. The Mi Thuna guesthouse owner was not there, but her daughter saw our scrapes and asked if we were ok. We replied that we were, but that a small piece of the moto had broken off. A few minutes later her mother returned and was livid even before we had a chance to explain ourselves. She had no concern at all for our well-being, immediately launching into a tirade about how we were bad moto drivers and that we drive too fast. We apologized and offered to cover the cost of repairing the part, up to 50,000 kip or $6 (something we knew would cost about $2 in Cambodia). When she asked for 500 baht (an odd request, as the baht is Thai currency), about $15, we refused and she became increasingly irrational.

I was too worked up to go with her into town to a moto shop, so I asked Shanti to go instead. They came back twenty minutes later, neither looking very happy. As Shanti tried to explain what had happened in town, the woman continued to yell and scream, not even offering us a chance to explain what we were willing to do to make amends. Let me first say that numbers in Laos are very similar to Khmer, so Shanti and I can understand them quite well. So at the moto shop in town, when the estimate when from 30,000 kip (about $3) to 50,000 (for which a receipt was written) to 60,000, Shanti knew exactly what was going on. A new 50,000 kip part was fitted, but supposedly it didn't fit quite right though it looked ok to Shanti), so they assumed a new piece would cost 120,000 kip (interestingly, about the same amount as 500 baht...). Shanti flat out refused to pay that much and, as a result, got yelled at in front of the whole town by the crazy guesthouse owner.

Once back at the guesthouse and being called "bad people" (in another context, she may have called us "sharks"), we decided it wasn't worth arguing any more. As she stormed off, I put 50,000 kip in her office and we left to catch a sawngthew. Tens minutes later, still discussing the matter as we wound back through the mountains, a moto rapidly closed on our pickup truck. It was the guesthouse owner, screaming like there was no tomorrow. She cut the sawngthew off and flat out refused to accept our 50,000 kip, shoving it into the pickup. Satisfied she had made us feel (and look) terrible, she drove off with exactly what she deserved: nothing. At least in my opinion, if she wasn't prepared to accept a reasonable price, she didn't deserve anything at all. All that we could hope for was that our next stop, the ultra-chill Si Phan Don (4,000 islands) would be just that - and no more crazy people.