A Swift and Somewhat Sad Goodbye to Laos.

Hello from Viet Nam! Me and Jin unfortunately left Laos a few days ago and have now landed, via a very slow and pleasant bus ride, in Hanoi!
After about a week in Vientiane, and the succesful mission of getting our visas for vietnam, we decided to move on from the "provincial capital" as our throngs of followers are calling it and move on towards some much needed beaches(not there yet, tomorrow?)!
We meant to spend a couple days heading east towards the border, stopping at Kong Lo cave on the way. We left Vientiane on the the last bus of the day heading east, at 7AM! We finally stepped off the tourist only minivan buses and "VIP" busses(again tourist only) and ventured on to some local Lao transportation in order to hopefully see a bit more of the non gringo trail Lao. I suppose we succeded. The bus ride was super chill and not bad at all. Windows down, no AC, and a million more stops, plus the addition of a 7ft tall bulldozer tire in the bus aisle added to the ambiance of the ride. The bus was chill, and surprisingly not so hot, as long as we were moving. I just made sure to keep my hands and feet out of the aisle at all times in case the rope slipped and the several hundred pound tire rolled down the aisle and destroyed the dashboard and everything in its way(it squeezed in with about an inch to spare on either side, i have no idea how they got it in the bus to begin with!)
We got off the bus in Ban Na Hin, after a 6 hour ride. From there we stood around at the bus stop, a wooden 10mx10m porch with a roof in a gravel lot, staring around blankly for about 5minutes, with no idea what to do! Finally we saw a foreigner and with some key questions filled in the gaps from the lonely planet on exactly how to get to Kong Lo cave. There are Tuk Tuks that drive foreigners there every day at 10, but we had missed those, but we got on a local tuk tuk acting as a delivery man to all the restaurants and stores on the way, and made our way to the caves by around 2.
The cave begins by entering a campground looking field bordering a river, very NorCal, with a hefty admission of 25cents. We had to leave our bags at the ticket booth, a guy sitting on another very similar porch to the bus stop, and bought our cave tour tickets. The cave begins by crossing a tiny bamboo bridge, with a drawbridge center made of a log split in half. The drawbridge center(as we found out later is slid to one end at the end of the day so the boat tour operators can go under the very very low bridge and ride their boats down the river home. Upstream from the bridge is a beautiful 50m wide and round swimming hole, with an awesome oval shaped cave on one end, with a cliff like mountain rising up above the cave(pics to come soon.) We hopped on a tiny boat that only was about 12 inches deep, like a very long skinny and flat canoe, and our driver, with another "spotter" up front drove us into the cave. The cave is filled with water, and if you want to go farther in than 100feet, you have to go by boat, or swimming. The cave is somewhere around 7km long, but i'm not posiitive if that is accurate, but it very well could be. The water is very shallow, and our boat continuously slid on the gravel floor of the cave river. We drove through the dark of the cave, with a guy in front of the boat with a super bright headlamp giving directions, and a driver in back steering, although you could tell the driver knew the cave by heart. We drove in to the darkness, armed only with the super bright headlamps of our two guides, Jins headlamp(thanks mom!) and my tiny flashlight! The river in the cave was only about 50 feet wide mas o menos and big rocks occcasionally stuck out of the water, or giant boulders could be seen on the edge, just like in any normal non cave river.... SO COOL! after a while, we got to a beach with some stairs that led up to some very cool and colorfully lit stalagmites and stalagtites. We looked around for a bit, and then headed onward. Every once in a while we'd hit rapids, and the boat would try to power through them upstream and then would get stuck. Sometimes we'd make it through without getting stuck, but more often than not, we'd be wading through knee deep rapids in the dark, as our guides pushed the boat the 15 feet up the river over the obstacle. We'd get back in the boat, the driver would bail out the water a bit, and then we'd head on. The cave was in some places 20 feet high and in other places at least 150ft(the book says 100m, but that is probably just a very small area.) It was amazing, and so unique. After a 45 minute trip, we reached light again, and I thought we were back at the original mouth of the cave, but it was a totally seperate, yet similar opening. We drove out, went upstream, stopped for some unneeded snack break(i wanted back in the cool and mysterious cave), and then headed back the way we came!
Ultimately, the Kong Lo Caves are fantastic. while not the most spectacular cave scenery in the world, it is some of the more unique, and the feeling of riding in a boat in the pitch black through a dark and large cavern on a motor boat is something that is truly fantastical! It made me want to start spelunking, minus my claustrophobic streak!
After we got out of the cave, we walked back around the swim hole to the "drawbridge" and passed some friendly Lao people playing guitar and chilling out by the river, then some friendly looking foreigners(as all the foreigners off the beaten track seemed much cooler than the ones we have previously been bumping in to.)We decided to skip the ride back to the guest house and buy some beers and chill by the river and walk back to the guest house, 1.5km away. I begged the guy to let us camp by the river, but they said it wasnt allowed at all. We imposed ourselves on the acoustic jam session and Jin made friends with the Lao posse while I was happy to talk to a cool guy i met from colorado. After a while, the sun began to go down, and amazingly, the Lao posse offered us a ride the 40km back to Ban Na Hin in their Air conditioned truck! The guitar crew chilled in the back, while we got to sit up front with Jin's new friends! We saved some money for the ride back to town, and didnt have to get up super early the next day to get back to town to catch the bus onwards towards the border.... worked out great! we found a cheap guest house in town, then woke up the next day and caught a bus to Lak Sao. From their, we stood confused in another gravel lot for ten minutes until another bus just happened to be heading straight for the coast of Vietnam, Vinh! It couldn't have been any easier!
Although I was sad to have it work out so smoothly and leave so quickly, it was nice to not have to stand around all day at bus stations or walk a mile with our bags, so I'm not complaining! I guess if you just throw yourself out there, and hope for the best, sometimes it works out!