Lets get back on track with my journey.
Before heading to Laos, I had no idea what to expect or where to go. But after all that I've done in Laos, I'd have to say it's one of the best places I've ever visited. I might be repeating myself for some of this entry, but I decided to be more thorough with my entries since I dont have a personal journal.
Tubing down the Nam Song River and stopping every 10 minutes at bars along the riverside is one of the many highlights of Vang Vieng. At each of these bars, you can purchase a Beer Lao for 10,000 kip and have an unlimited amount of flying off zipwires or swings. But too bad poor little Vicky cannot swim. Although I did try the first zipwire and nearly drowned. Luckily Shein (an American guy from Michigan) came to my rescue. As we tubed down the river, the views were spectacular -- the sun setting and the mountains -- just stunningly beautiful. Even better when the storm came and we were just sitting in our tubes watching. Yeah not the best idea to be in water with thunder.
The following day, Shein, Dan (Shein's traveling partner), Mike (from Sweden) and I went on a caving tour. Our 27 year old guide, Lay, was a former body builder, who was showing off his muscles to us and feeling the boys arms. I didn't have any muscles on my scrawny arms to show off  . We got to the elephant cave, which had a huge Buddha inside along with Buddha's footprint. I decided to put my foot next to the footprint to compare our sizes, but Lay flipped out and had to pray for me. I also prayed for my forgiveness. I should have known better! Inside the cave, there was a stalagmite which resembled an elephant with a trunk!
Before heading off to the next cave, we stopped to pick up some headlamps. You should have seen these headlamps, oh were they top notch. The head lamp had a huge battery with wires leading to to the bulb which you can attach to your forehead. The battery had exposed wire and would flash on and off depending on how you held it. Inside the next cave, my light went out and I was quite nervous. But fortunately, Lay took a lighter and burned the plastic off the wire and reconnected it elsewhere. I thought he'd get electricuted, but good thing he didn't. There were some parts of the cave where we had to crawl through small crevices and I felt really bad for Mike because he kept bumping his head.
The cave was quite long and Lay couldn't tell us how long it was. We encountered another group of cavers and turned off our lights to try to scare them. But I think they heard us snickering. The third cave wasn't very interesting, but the last cave was great. The final cave was called the "water cave" where we were given innertubes and linked ourselves into a "human snake" to discover the cave. The water was quite cold and I thought I'd catch a cold, but this was probably one of the best caves I've been to.
After such a great day caving, Shein, Dan, and I made a on-the-spot decision to do a 2-day 1 night trek into the jungle with Green Discovery. This trek was quite new and the company had only taken 1 group on this trek before so we were in for an adventure.
Over view walking back to the guesthouse from the cave.
After returning to our guesthouse, we got a treat. A "MONSOON." No, not a simple storm. I was in the shower, when it began and ended up showering in the dark. I was in the room alone, and decided to walk out to find the others. As I walked out, I felt raindrops the size of gumballs hitting my face and body. It was like being attacked by someone with a sling, only much faster! Then out of nowhere, it started hailing! I was like wtf? Hail in Asia? I ran for my life, trying to hold onto something as the winds nearly blew me away. When I got to Shein's room, I found his room filled with water. It was hilarious, but I did feel sorry for him having to spend the night there in a damp bed. The people from the guesthouse were on their knees trying to control the water from filling up the floor with their towels and buckets, which seemed to become a nice river. And they told us it was a SMALL monsoon! I definitely did not want to be there for the BIG monsoon.
Every menu in Vang Vieng had a HAPPY menu. This meant WEED, WEED, some more WEED, and maybe some OPIUM. Perfectly legal and pure. I didn't dare try it because everyone I knew who did do it, was paranoid for over 24 hours and couldn't do anything fun.
The following day we were informed by Mr. Toh, the manager of Green Discovery, that the trek was cancelled due to the monsoon from last night which made the trail quite difficult and not too safe. We were all bummed. But after some contemplation, we decided to delay our Luang Prabang bus trip and go for the trek. After some persuasion, Mr. Toh scrambled to make all the necessary arrangements for us to go on the trip. We had 3 guides, Lay (our caving guide), Phan, and Low (18 year old who didn't speak a word of English). Low was a trip. I would be climbing up a rock and next thing I know, I look up and he has disappeared and find him 10 minutes later resting in the shade. The trek was definitely a difficult one -- with steep, slippery rocks making me lose my balance every two seconds. Because the trek was so new, most of the time we were using a machete to chop down branches and bamboo in order to create a trail for ourselves. Occasionally, we would get blocked by a fallen tree, massive boulder, or steep rock wall which we would have to climb over. Not only was the trek incredibly challenging, but it was also dangerous. Fortunately, I brought Chacos from home to hike in --which are essentially sandals with straps...great soles though. I was able to waddle through streams but the only downside was that my feet were exposed to sharp leaves and twigs which occasionally got a hold of my feet and roughed them up a bit. Left me a few scars to remember this trek in the jungle. We were carrying a ton of weight on us during this trek...lots of water, tents, sleeping bags, WHISKEY, fruit, meat, bread, etc. For lunch our guides made kabobs over a small fire which we had with fried rice. It was a simple meal but ohhh was it good.
Low skewering our kebobs.
The finish product....yummy!
We then went through a cave ...most of the time climbing the cave or falling into pools of water filled with stinky mud and mold--or so we thought, but in reality guano! The rock walls were so steep that we needed makeshift ladders --- which were trees, using the branches as rungs...praying as we climb that the branch wouldn't break in half.
Me struggling to get to the top of the rock wall w/o tipping over.
But after climb, the cave would open up to a beautiful view of the jungle. The sunlight also allowed us to see ourselves covered in bat poop from head to toe wreaking. But the view was amazing and our stench was no longer of any importance. Who could not be impressed with limestone cliffs and dense vegetation with sunrays shining through the cracks? None of my pictures would do the place justice.
We finally reached a stream where we could pitch tents for the night right before dusk. At parts of the stream there were pools large enough for us to lay down to have a nice freezing cold bath in mountain water. But it felt great to get off all the sweat, dirt, mud, bat poop and bugs off of us. After pitching up some tents and starting a fire, it began to rain! Our guides started sprinting into the jungle with a machete and in an instant returned with bamboo sticks and banana leaves which they used to build a canopy in barely 5 minutes! It was quite sturdy too with the leaves used for a roof.
The boys helping out with our canopy.
The canopy kept all 6 of us dry the while we ate instant noodles and drank whiskey trading stories. We were taught how to drink Lao style. One person mans the bottle and pours a shot for every other member of the group, one at a time. Each time you drink, everyone yells "Sok Dee!" When you have poured one shot for each person, you take one yourself and pass the bottle to the next person. You repeat this process until all the whiskey is gone. We washed our dinner down with the Whiskey- which tastes like a blend of gasoline and battery acid- and then went to sleep early. Or tried to go to sleep I should say. We were sleeping on a bed of rocks trying to get comfortable. But cuz I'm such a heavy sleeper, I was able to sleep anywhere even when I knew for a fact there was huge furry spider in our tent. I was awoken in the morning by a loud buzzing noise, which I thought was outside my tent ...but in actually were about 5 bees inside my tent. I dove outside finding hundreds of them right outside. I sucked it up and ate my breakfast with them hoping they wouldn't sting me. For the next few hours we climbed vertically up the mountain using the machete to create a trail like the day before, but because it was so steep, I fell quite a few times. Not only was my butt filled with mud, but I happened to fall on a plant with a tons of thorns and got about ten of them stuck in my right hand. I had to sit down on a rock to take them out one by one by myself. But I couldnt seem to get all of them out and just gave up and continued onwards. When we reached the top, we didn't want to head down. The view was amazing, but no one looked forward to the trek down since it would be much more difficult going down rather than up due to the slippery rocks.
Lay, me, Shein, & Dan at the top.
Looking down. Although it doesn't look very steep from here, it was!
As we were descending we saw another human being for the first time. He was a local hunter with his rifle. We screamed "Dont shoot, dont shoot!" but I doubt he understood us. We survived and kept hiking downwards.
As we climbed down, we crossed into rice fields where we saw random bamboo huts where would could get some shade and rest.
The worst part was we ran out of water! We were all dehydrated and moved quite slowly. Finally we reached the bottom of the mountain where the land was flat and easy to stroll through. We got to a small rest house where I found water coming out of a pipe for the cows to drink from....you can bet on it that I ran towards it. I was gulping large amounts of water while the American guys thought I was crazy for drinking the water, but one of them did dare to join me due to his dying thirst. We went through one last cave and hiked some more to a river. Looking across the river, we could see the tuk-tuk which would take us back to our guesthouse and boy were we excited. But there was only one problem. We had to cross a long bridge about 100 meters long over the river.
Five bamboo sticks made up the width of the bridge with wires on both sides of the bridge for you to hold on to. It looked like we were in a movie! Every time I took a step the bridge would shake so much I thought I would swing right over and fall 20 meters into the water hitting rocks on the way. Eventually I did make it across and we headed back to Vang Vieng in our tuk-tuk. After a great shower, the three of us were ready for a Lao massage. One hour cost only about 3 bucks a person. It was going to be my first real massage. After smearing on a ton of tiger balm on me, the masseuse began to pull, yank and knead. At times I thought my bones would pop out of its socket. In the evening, we took Low, Lay, and Phan out for a night out and taught each other drinking games. I think this has been one of the best highlights of my trip. It was by far the most difficult trek I've ever done and at times felt like I wouldn't make it down the mountain but I'm proud that I did conquer it. I'm sorry this entry is about a month behind. Hopefully I'll update more often. This entry did take me a few weeks to write though!
My view from the guesthouse of Vang Vieng. Laos is incredibly beautiful -- still traditional in its own sense not yet changed by tourism. Everything closes at 11 pm or so, in Vietiene, if you're out past the curview, a cop will personally take you back to your bedroom!
The view outside my bus window heading to Luang Prabang from Vang Vieng. Every time I looked up I'd see clouds surrounding the mountains, if I looked down, I'd see a steep hill which I hope the bus wouldn't flip down into. Which does occasionally happen in Laos. | 
. So I learned my lesson and stayed away from the jumps. The last bar stop was WEED heaven. I don't think I've EVER seen that much weed in my ENTIRE life. But no, I wasn't willing to try pure weed. I'm not that adventurous now.
