Tuesday we got up early..well early for me and headed out to Nan district. The goal was to head to the rocket festival which happens once at year in Vientiane and some of the other districts but not in Luang Prabang. On our way we decided to stop at some waterfalls and some caves. The first time I had seen either on this trip. The crew of tourists included Tom and Myself, Chanta, her husband, Lanoy (the girl who lives with them), 3 of the library staff and Brad and Yusa an american couple from boulder who moved to Laos. Her parents are Lao. The first stop not related to some minor car sickness was at the caves. These are not the famous tourist caves that most people who Visit Luang Prabang go to but they were pretty amazing. At the base of the mountain were two caged monkeys. They are being killed off at alarming rates because people eat them. The caves were about 100 meters up a mud hill with some assorted swings on the way up. The pictures will help the description. The cave was 400 meters deep and about 300 meters in it got to the point where you had to squat walk for about 25 meters. Times like this I am not a huge fan of being one of the bigger people in the country. After about 30 minutes walking through the cave we played around on the swings and then headed on our way to a waterfall. Like the caves we were the only people there. We took of our shoes and walked up the waterfall. I left my camera behind because I was not sure what we would see or how wet it would be but many others did and I hope to have some photos soon. Taking steps cautiously we arrived to the top where the main drop was and it was a very beautiful spot with the drop being about 20 feet. No pools to swim in sadly but it was beautiful with water spiders jumping around feeding on something I couldnt see. Not nearly as scary as it sounds. We got back into the car and headed for Nan. We arrived at someones house where a party was going on. We doubled the size of the party and is custom started drinking. The music was so loud Brad smartly had to walk away for a while to save his hearing...he was the only smart one. On the menu was duck blood soup which was one of the spiciest things I have ever tried and I didnt try very much. Chicken Laap and chicken feet soup filled out the rest of the eats. I just kept wondering where all the good parts of the chicken went. I never got that answer Tom and I assumed it gets thrown to the dogs. Drinking and dancing ensued with the CLI staff from Nan and then we walked to the rice fields. In the terraced rice fields were two bamboo stands which were about 15 feet high. People would climb up with their homemade rockets and then light the fuse and run off. Very few were truly successful. The ones that failed were the most fun to watch. The successful ones flew about 2 hundred feet into the air then came diving back to earth. As we stood standing one of the guys from the party who had taken a liking to Tom got seats for us in the VIP section. We couldn't see the flight very well so we moved. As we were standing around we were offered drinks by some people who were picnicking near us. They eventually invited us to sit down but as we did we received a phone call beckoning us back to the camp to head home. On our way back we stopped at the CLI learning center in Nan and looked around. It was another nice building. We got home and I passed out for the next 13 hours after dinner. We got internet back at the house so I woke up and I am writing this post. Hope all is well elsewhere in the world.
Here for the photos.
