Jan 6th 2012, Ban Kong Lo (Konglor Caves), Peltsi

Hooooooowdy hou! I welcome myself to Laos and to fancypants blog! As Olli mentioned, they found us, Fortunate or unfortunate for us? Time will tell.

Me and Esa both left for the trip from Riga after spending new year there. A fifth friend was also invited but unfortunately he couldn't join us because he had to play floorball. Esa travelled through Berlin, Amman and Bangkok, I travelled only through Helsinki and Bangkok. I spent my Helsinki-Bangkok flight sleeping and chatting with a Finnish golfer and didn't even have time for a single movie. What a pity, I missed Cowboys and Aliens!



Anyway. As mentioned, Vientiane didn't impress us much. Nice lazy city but didn't look or act like a capital at all. Lots of comfortable and cute street restaurants but we decided to only spend one night there with all four of us. So after some heavy bargaining we left the town the following morning by bus towards Konglor Caves which is supposed to be some fancy set of caves.

Bus ride took about 7,5 hours. Bus broke up only twice during the ride which I guess is about average. Lots of time was also spent on unloading lots of random stuff from the bus to random places. It was even raining in Vientiane when we left which was a bit odd. But eventually we did get to a very cute little village next to the caves.



We arrived to the village a bit before 6pm. First we sent out scouting squads to find shelter for the travellers against the dangers of the wild. (Such as cute little dogs, beautiful sunshine and fellow travellers.) It was already dark so we didn't see much of the village. We had supper with some other Westerners in a strange little restaurant where all the Westerners were already waiting for their food. Waiting seemed to be the Thing in that place. Our guesthouse also had a restaurant but we didn't find a way to get any food there. Later in the evening we visited some local celebrations where we met a lot of extremily friendly Laotians. If waiting was the Thing in the restaurant, friendliness is the Thing in Laos in general.



Now the boys are having some showers and soon we'll head to the caves. Esa has been feeling a bit sick but he seems to be already better today. Nice! Tomorrow morning we'll take a bus and head further south.