It's 11.30pm on a Monday evening and the 10K sound-system across the river has just started blasting karaoke versions of Lao pop songs into the night air. A brief thunderstorm just washed the oppressive heat from the electrified air, but the temperature has immediately begun to rise as the water evaporates from the sun-baked soil.
The strangeness of this place has been intensified by an inconsistent illness which has been coming and going in bouts of dizziness, loss of energy and appetite, nausea and exhaustion, almost on an hour-to-hour basis. Attempting to ignore it to the best of our ability, Sam and I have been bouncing over the rock-strewn roadways on a noisy Chinese moped, visiting caves and rivers, driving through farms and across streams, losing track of the days.
There are signs for the Blue Lagoon posted all over the tracks around the town. Intrepid landowners hope to entice tourists onto their land, in order to claim a small guide fee and entrance charge to the caves in the hills behind their farms. We were guided into one pitch-black hole in the limestone karst by a pair of ten-year-olds with two headlamps. They led us through cramped passages to a deep cave with a terrifying drop to one side of a treacherous path of loose rocks. It was a small cave, and we were thankful to be back in the daylight after only a short time underground.
The following day we were led into Pha Pherng Cave by a young boy who'd finished school for the day. He pointed out honeycombs hanging from the rocks, and showed us frogs and spiders on the dark walls. One of the caves was filled with deep blue water where I saw a fish swimming slowly in the darkness. The flooded fields beside the path leading from the cave sparkled with dragonflies in flight, the sun flashing on their irridescent wings.
Later that day we went to the Poukham Cave and climbed the steep rocks to the entrance up in the cliffs. We were arrested by the sight of the vast vaulted space which throbbed with the echoed voices of the tiny, ant-like figures exploring its lunar surfaces. The space is breath-taking and its magnificence is illuminated by the light of the sun, which pours through a great opening in the sheer cliff face. Deeper inside the mountain, the cave extends into utter darkness where it is even grander in scale, and the rock formations are staggeringly beautiful. We wandered around in the labyrinthine, alien landscape, stopping to stare in wonder at stalactites and stalacmites, chimneys and rock pools, until we bacame disoriented and began to feel uncomfortable in the lonely darkness. On the way out, when we could make out the distant glow of the daylight, I played a few tunes in the empty vastness, the whistle echoing impossibly from the distant rocks. After descending from the cliffs, the dark water of the aptly-named Blue Lagoon was refreshing, but quickly became chilling, bringing the cold of the mountains as it flows to the river.
Today we went rock-climbing on the Sleeping Wall, a few Km outside of Vang Vieng. The instructors were excellent, but many of the experienced climbers there were surprised by the demanding climbs being undertaken by the novices in their charge. Starting on a 4C, and progressing up to a 20 metre high 6A+ which nobody in our group managed to complete, we were all exhausted by the end of the day, and a platform swing into the Nam Song River was the perfect way to cool down between climbs. I tried the 6A+ twice, having fallen no more than a foot from the top, but I was too tired and weak by then, and I had to drop. I hope I have the strength for the kayaking trip to Vientaine we have planned for tomorrow.
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