down into vangvieng

we left luangprabang on tuesday, taking a seven-hour bus ride south to vangvieng. the bus took us through steep hilly (almost mountainous) country, winding along hairpin turns and steep drop-offs. we passed through many little towns, every 5 or 10 km, stretched along the road, dusted grey-brown by the traffic on the road, comprised of cinderblock buildings and huts.

we arrived in vangvieng after dark and grabbed a guest house near the bus station (we might have been overly hasty, fearing a repeat of our first night in luangprabang). as we started exploring, we realized that the weird black empty thing seperating us from the rest of the town was a gravel airstrip. people drive all over it, kids in bike/scooter gangs hang out, and busses are parked on it. we have yet to see an airplane.

this town is a bit surreal. it is a popular spot for european tourists, and israelis as well. there are dozens of restaraunts that have raised padded booths for people to lay in, and tvs that play episodes from american tv shows from dvds, from the time they open until they close. they each stick with one tv show. there are probably 2 that play the simpsons, 1 that plays family guy, 3 that play sports and movies, and about 15 that play friends. endless reruns of the same shows. you can't walk a block without hearing the friends themesong. at least it can't be heard from our guest house. then i would lose it.

as it is though, these things can be avoided. oddly enough, we keep noticing that when the lao themselves are watching tv, they usually choose american professional wrestling or low-budget thai soap operas. interesting taste.

on wednesday morning we found sam franey, my friend from alaska with whom i spent two summers cutting salmon. he has been here in vangvieng for weeks, and knows the town well. we just missed his brother, gabe, who just returned to the states to work some more.

sam and i rented mountain bikes ($1.50/day) and took off for the mountains. there is a gorgeous wall of jungle-covered rocks sticking up maybe 3 km to our west, and the road we chose took us through a gap, into the next valley over. it was gorgeous, flat yellow and green farm fields seperated by tiny huts, rows of trees and streams. the next range of mountains was barely visible beyond (its been overcast and hazy every day).

sam helped me find some rock faces to climb, but most were choked up with vines and bushes growing out of cracks. climbers must prune certain cliffs, because everything looked equally inaccessable. we made our way to a cave, one of many that draw tourists here. we climbed bamboo ladders up to the entrance, and used my headlamp to explore the whole length of it. it went back hundreds of meters, and its interior was covered in beautiful formations and surface textures, all carved out by running or dripping water.

i found some old broken pottery on a ledge, along with a handful of broken stone figures of the buddha. they can't be too old, but its exciting to find artifacts of any kind hidden deep in caves.

today we walked to the one sports field we know of, and tossed my frisbee around. some local kids, teenagers, began to join us. it didn't look like they'd ever thrown a disc, but they caught on fast. when we had enough locals and they were good enough, we started a game, and played all afternoon. it was a blast, and the kids seemed to be in a constant thrilled state. i'm sure we'll be back at it tomorrow, although my feet are trashed from playing barefoot on gravelly dirt/grass.