Tuesday, January 29th, 2013 Vientiane, Laos

The next morning we proceeded to the 'famous' Tham Kong Lo cave.  Imagine a river disappearing at the edge of a monolithic limestone mountain and running 7km through a pitch-black, winding cave and you will have a sense of the cave --  it is truly one of the natural wonders of Laos.  The cave-cumtunnel is up to 100m wide in some places and almost as high.  It takes a motorized canoe nearly two hours to pass through and an hour to come back.


Boat pilots hired for the journey lead visitors to natural stalagmites and stalactites in a dry cavern branching off the main tunnel.  We were thankful to have powerful flashlights and our flip-flops when we jumped in and out of the canoe.  Besides snaking through the tunnel, the Nam Hin Bun meanders through some spectacular scenery -- gothic mountains and cliffs of jagged black karst.  It is amazing that some hardy trees have managed to take root on the cliffs. 

Getting back from our trip to the cave, we decided to find another restaurant in the village at which we ate a typical Laos lunch and headed out for a hike in the village, using the Nam Hin Bun river as our guide.  We walked along the river and then into the forest with our two fellow travellers and two dogs from the village accompanying us on our exploration. In the forest, we found a buddha embedded high in the cliff.  It was a spectacular sight.  It is difficult to imagine how the buddha got there as it was in an extremely high place.  After our amazing hike, we returned to the restaurant near our Guest House for an evening of fun.  The food in this particular restaurant was delicious.  However, since they only had one pot to cook in, we had to patient as they cooked one meal at a time.