Nong Khiaw - Travel and Cave

Traveled to Nong Khiaw in a minibus. It was slightly pricey compared with the regular bus, but we were excited to find one going direct and when we wanted to go, as we've read that the bus transfer could be quite time consuming (like, overnight).

We were told the minibus would take around 8 hours, but incredibly, in spite of construction for much of the first 3 hours, it only took 6 and a half. We were impressed by how much of the road they had under construction at once, but unlike in the US, there did appear to be a reason behind it. Every couple kilometers there was another team with a pile of rock, sand, and preformed concrete gutter sections working on their own length of road with shovels and hammers. Some teams seemed to be working out of a local village; in other places there were a couple bamboo-and-tarp tents nearby, presumably housing the workers. Traditional parallel processing.

We also saw lots of fires raging in the jungle. Surprisingly, these were mostly on the hills rather than in the flat low areas, suggesting that perhaps, contrary to what we would have expected, they were probably not being cleared for agriculture or ranching. They don't seem to use the hills at all for that stuff: a sign, I guess, that there is plenty of land to support the local population. At least this seemed to be the case in the rural far north.

Upon reaching Nong Khiaw, we discovered that it has been fully integrated onto the tourist trail. Disappointing. But it was still beautiful.

From Drop Box

We did the hike up to the nearby cave where the local population took refuge from the bombing during the war. It was kind of cool, but the real point of the walk was to see a bit more of the incredible scenery.

From Drop Box

From Drop Box

From Drop Box

From Drop Box

We also saw more burning, clearly controlled, and this part in an area that did look like it had potential for agriculture. Probably this was the burn responsible for the huge amount of ash we'd noticed in the air in town.

From Drop Box

Back in town, we wandered around trying to figure out what we wanted to do next. There was a similar situation as Laung Nam Tha with a couple outfitters offering overpriced tours (trekking, cycling, kayaking, etc). Although there were tons of tourists in town, no one else had signed up for anything. We decided that these places must advertise to make you feel like you've come all this way, and you need to spend the last $30 pp to see the "100 waterfalls" or whatever. Except at that price you are really paying for 2 dudes to sit around all day surfing the internet 6 days per week waiting for that one sucker to sign up for a tour on the 7th. We decided not to be the sucker. Seriously, it's more expensive than the Tower of London or Stonehenge. But I doubt it's as unique an experience.

We were also considering taking some time to travel an hour north on the river to a village that doesn't have any roads and was, as of the publication date on our out-of-date guidebook, a totally unspoiled destination with few tourists. But considering the way Nong Khiaw has been transformed into a tourist trap in the last few years, and every second tourist we talked to was headed up the river there next, we're guessing the unspoilt days are over for that village.

So what did we come to Nong Khiaw for anyway? Just for a transit transfer actually. The 7-hour slow boat ride down the Nam Ou River to Laung Prabang is supposed to have incredible scenery; one of the best sections of river is Laos. We're here as a compromise doing this instead of the 2-day slow boat ride along the Mekong River to Laung Prabang that Josh wanted to do and Mary thought would be too much. That's tomorrow.

We spent the night in a cute little bamboo bungalow.

From Drop Box