Laos Part 2: (Savannakhet, Tha Khaek and Kong Lo Cave)

Not a lot happened during this leg of the trip as I had to slow us down so that we would be able to watch the US election in a town where I could guarantee I would be able to get cable tv.  We arrived in colonial Savannakhet and walked into town from the bus station.  We headed to the cheap option from Lonely Planet, but it has now shut down.  They pointed us to another place and we took a wander around the colonial town.  Its quite unremarkable, but nice for a stroll.  The kind of town that you would not especially go out of your way to visit, but that equally you could pass a day in if you have to.  My notes read 'colonial town' and that's it.  Seems a fitting description.  Spurs lost to Wigan and it seemed like Obama was edging ahead in all the polls.  I was quietly confident and could not understand the confidence in the conservative camp.  I figured he should take most of the swing states including Colorado.  I thought Virginia was a toss up which Obama may squeak and that Romney would take Florida.

We had a potter around the town in the morning .  There is a nice little church in the centre of the town and we got attacked by some dogs on the streets.  Jessica and Cannelle ran off, even though I had told them that standing your ground was the best option.  We walked to the bus station and wanted a minibus to Tha Khaek.  The guy refused to even look at us and we were left with the bus as an option.  It was a super shit bus that took fucking ages to get to Tha Khaek.  Eventually we limped into town and walked in to get a hotel.  They still can't believe we are ok with walking.  As we are starting to reach a pretty high level of fitness, these strolls into town are not so difficult now.  The hotel had only BBC and not CNN or Fox.  Shit. Oh well British coverage of the election was better than nothing.  We ate in a local restaurant and discovered that our plan to go to the lagoon was not possible as the road was too rough for scooters.  I can't verify this and sadly I would have liked to have tried anyway.

New Orleans won.  Is it the continuation of a fight back to the play offs.  Given that we are on life support today against the New York Giants it would prove not to be.  We need to win out and get some help.  Not dead yet, but pretty much there.  We went to get some bicycles.  They had only one and wanted 30,000 when we knew it was 20,000.  Another lie.  Anyway they rustled up another two in a different location and after waiting a long time we went for a cycle East of town.  Only we didn't go East.  I accidentally made us cycle 3km South before I realised we were going in the wrong direction.  We visited some caves to begin with.  All of them are unremarkable, but its the route itself that is the attraction.  The scenery East of Tha Khaek on the first part The Loop is spectacular.  Probably the best we saw in all of Laos.  You have the towering limestone karsts either side of you on the route.  The little lake where you can swim is also really picturesque.  It was a little too cold for me to swim in, but Jessica and Cannelle had no problems.  We cycled all the way to the last cave, but they charged for entrance and even though the girls went in and said it was nice, I decided to sprint cycle back.  It was good to get some decent exercise and my knees only swelled a little after the accident.  Its a little like Hpa-An in Myanmar, only better.  It was the final day before the election and Obama was still ahead.  I had a feeling he was going to take this.

Election Day.  I just stayed in bed, only exiting briefly to get some breakfast.  It was over long before it began.  You knew when Georgia and South Carolina were not called immediately for the Republicans, when North Carolina is too close to call and when Pennsylvania and Michigan are immediately called for the Democrats that this was going to be a Democratic night.  It was infuriating watching the BBC commentary.  They had no idea what they were doing or seemingly not much about American poltiics in general.  My personal favourite was when the stupid woman showing the date added up all the possible Romney states before the final polls closed to show it was still theoretically possible and came up short.  She seemed really confused.  If she had realised that she had forgotten to colour in Idaho and Alaska for the Republicans (both bankers) then she would have crossed the line.  Embarassingly amateur.  Maybe I should apply for a job.  Still Obama won (even taking Florida) and that was quite comprehensive.  Waiting for Romney to realise he had been beaten was quite funny.  Seems the Manchurian candidate could not cross the line.  Lets hope the Republicans can get some of their impressive bench into position for 2016, especially if the Democrats makes the error of nominating Hillary.

The next day we were up really early to make a mental number of connections to see Kong Lo Cave in one day.  We walked to the bus station (after the moron working there, sleeping on his hands, had failed to tell us if a bus was running to the junction town the day before) and caught the bus at 5.30am to Vientiane.  We jumped off at the junction with Route 8 (I don't have the name here and google map is shit) and took a connecting bus to the town just north of Kong Lo.  From there you can get a truck to Kong Lo Cave.  Its a bit of a bitch and you have to get the 5.30am bus to make it, but it can be done.  Our only problem was when we arrived in the town North of Kong Lo.  There were no ATMs.  Fuck.  I hadn't thought about that and we did not have much money.  I was very worried we would not make it, but hopefully Jessica would have enough to lend us.  We climbed on the truck and there were two American guys.  They had watched the election as well and we chatted about politics and 2016.  They were going to do the cave and head back to the town, so its possible to even do that in one day and maybe get to Vientiane, but maybe that's too much of a stretch.  In the hotel we stayed in there was a French couple.  They had come to Kong Lo on a bus for 120,000 Kip.  Fuck me.  That's a lot.  Its why the Laotians hate us gypo travellers.  We went down to the river and took the tour.  Its not as cool as we had hoped, but it is worth it.  You take a little boat across the river and then walk into the cave.  From there you take a boat trip through the cave.  Don't bother renting the flashlights as they suck.  Bring your own high powered one if you want to see anything on your own.  They have a sweeping flashlight on the boat.  Halfway you get off and walk for around 10 minutes through the prettier parts of the cave.  Towards the end, when we could see the exit, we had to go up some rapids.  We disembarked for a bit and the boat attempted to ride the rapids.  It failed.  Water started to pour in and the boatman had to save the engine from flooding.  That would have been interesting.  Instead he just about rode it over and had to bail out all the water.  Comic tragedy averted, we carried on.  They had lost something.  We weren't sure what, but it seemed important.  We went for a walk to the village (average and they don't give a shit about you if you are not doing a homestay or buying beer) and then took the boat back.  On the way back we scoured the water for the missing object.  What was it?  How valuable it must be.  At last we found it.  What was it?  A fucking scoop made from a cut up petrol carton.  Fuck sake.  You could make a new one in 5 seconds and we had to spend 15 minutes searching for it.  Its not even a real scoop.  Back at the hotel a bus load of tourists came in on the super expensive bus.  What a waste of money.  We had to budget through the evening as we didn't really have enough money for food.

In the morning we grabbed the truck to the village for 20,000 if I remember right.  We then got told we need a bus to the junction.  That's bullshit (as usual), because there are buses that come in from the Vietnam border and pass through for Vientiane in the morning.  Having been told there are no buses, we walked to the main road and immediately two buses came round the corner.  One bus grabbed some of our bags and the other grabbed the others.  One was full of foreigners (and was the stupidly expensive bus), while the other was full of locals (coming from Vietnam).  No way was I getting on the foreigner bus, but I had to fight the guy with our bags to get them back.  Damn him.  We went to get on the bus and they wanted 60,000, but we haggled it down to 50,000.  So we were going to Vientiane for just over half of what the others were paying.  Idiot tourists who like to waste their money lol.  Anyway onwards to the capital at last.