Traveling is so often about the atmosphere YOU pick up. Everybody will get a different experience, even if you are doing exactly the same things. It's due to your personal emotions, the people you are with, perhaps even the weather or the vibes you bring with you from your previous stop.
We were on the road with Chantal and Chico. The bus ride was spectacular with an endless changing landscape, wonderful windy roads and amazing mountains and rock formations. The plants and trees had all different kind of green.
We had a short stop from where we had the chance to take some great shots and get some fresh air. To have some rambutans with us was a great snack as usual! It was our favorite snack for bus rides and we always had juicy fruits on our travels.
We arrived in the afternoon. The caves are close to a town in a dead end street. It was like a valley with majestic mountains on the left and right hand side. Everywhere are rice fields, now that the rainy season already started, in a beautiful color.
Kids where fishing with big net constructions in the little ponds between the houses. As smaller the kids are, as more dedicated they are for the job. They all help to find some food for the family. It may be little fish from this pond or little snails they find in the rice fields. They go home and their mother will fry them in oil. At the same time they keep the animals eating the rice plants. A few months back the entire area was dry and nothing was around. With the rain the fish eggs from the previous season hatch and bring new life and food into the area.
After looking a little bit around we found a nice and charming guest house. As we had a Chantal with us we thought it fits very well.
The kids are helping the families and are not afraid to sit and ride on a 500kg water buffalo. They even enjoy this little trip and we even saw a tiny girl riding a buffalo in full speed over the road.
The town settlement is only 1km away from the caves and so we walked the next morning to the cave.
From the shore we could already see the entrance to the cave. The now rising water was thundering in the river bed.
Three people per boat were aloud, plus two boat man. If you are only two, you still have to pay full price of three for one boat, so team up with other travelers. After paying the park entrance fee, renting a head lamp and putting on the life jackets, we climbed into a small boat which transported us to the entrance of the cave. There we got out of the boat, had to walk a little bit into the cave. There another boatman attached an outboard motor to another boat and loaded us in again.
After 15 min boat ride we came to a stalagmite and stalactite section. We could get out of the boat and walk into the fairy like wonderland. It was a lot bigger then what we expected.
Thats us with our lovely company! We had such a wonderful time. We sat for almost 30 min in a boat and drove upstream in this huge cave on the windy river. I am sure that during dry season this looks very different. I heard that it can happen that you have to get out of the boat at some of the passages and push the boat over the rocks. We could go in full speed, though couldn't do a walk to a little village on the other side of the cave. You could take a guide to get there and then stay in a home stay with some of the locals there. That also sounded like a very interesting option, but we knew we wouldn't have enough time to do this.
On the way back we had a boy on his bike which overtook us. Whilst he was riding his bike very hard, he always looked over his shoulders with a huge grin on his face. A rope was attached to his bike and on the end of the rope was a small water bottle. This bottle was filled with gravel. Two bamboo sticks where put through and at each end was a wheel cut out of old flip flops. This was the COOLEST TOY I've ever seen! And the boy had a ball with it. So finally a good use of some trash! The amount of flip flops I had already seen lonely and left behind... Now was the moment I wished I had seen this before so I could have built this kind of toys to give to the kids and make them happy!
On a little trip through the rice fields, we met this group of young girls. We tried to talk to them with our 4 words of Laos we knew and they had a good laugh. In the little basket they collected snails. After we asked them if we could take a picture they started to pose for us, and laughed even more. What a joy!
The evening turned the sky mystical and the different colors. We loved this place. Our excursion through the village and through the mud of the little alleys in-between the houses brought us a great idea of their way of living. We played with some kids until the grandma came and started shouting at the kids. I guess she tried to tell them that she doesn't like if they play with strangers. Well, we look pretty dangerous and smoking hot!
Here more pictures from Kong Lor.
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