Day by day, city by city, country by country, we realise how large and complex the world is. We realise how ridiculous it is to try and traverse more than half of it in a meagre six months. We realise that the car is a very small place to spend that time. We realise that we’ve got a long journey ahead of us.
Never again will I chuckle about how “it’s a small world…” It really isn’t.
We have now come more than thirteen-thousand kilometres through eight countries. We arrived in Laos less than a week ago. We came up from Cambodia, and within only a few kilometres of the border the cows were fatter, the people were stockier, and the roads were flatter. We plodded up to Central Laos passing straw-hut villages and every now and then the provincial riverside town, their streets lined with romantic, decaying French colonial buildings.
North of Savanakhet we veered off the smooth road and headed about an hours drive towards the Tong Lo Cave, a seven kilometre stream through a big, heavy mountain.
The closest village to the cave is skirted by limestone cliffs that screech up from the endless, lush rice fields. And on the other side of the village is the Hinboun river.
At the village entrance there were children climbing on cars or riding up and down the road, dinking friends. Toothless men wearing rags silently watched on and people collectively napped, escaping the midday sun. They woke and surveyed us through sleepy eyes. There were women creating the most beautiful, patterned weavings. Colourful and intricate that only hands of experience can create.The houses were made of cane patched together in a criss-cross, elevated on sticks to avoid the occasional flood. There were holes in almost every house and from a few houses Laotian, maybe Thai, pop blared out. There was washing hanging clumsily on any vertical ledge and goats tied up along the muddy path through the village.
We were immediately greeted by some men who spoke no English but knew what we were there for. They guided us towards the river and prompted us onto a canoe. We took off with a splutter, cutting through the river. We passed naked toddlers and bathing teenage girls clinging to shawls, jumping, pushing and playing in the water, screaming with glee with each shove, each duck dive.
At the entrance of the cave we changed canoes, and took off into the darkness. It took us two hours. Two hours of the endless echo of water rushing over millions of stones, ancient, dripping stalactites growing longer with each drip, and massive, pitch black caverns only illuminated by the boat driver’s head-torch and the occasional, useless flash of our cameras.
Upon exiting the cave we passed several boats of men, each carrying containers of petrol. We were told later that they were smuggling the petrol along the river, into Vietnam past a poorly patrolled border crossing. This wasn’t our first confrontation with smuggling. The next day as we made our way to Vientiane, hundreds of mangy, caged dogs heaped on an over-crowded truck were heading in the opposite direction, towards Vietnam. “They’re certainly not heading to a pet shop…” Dad mused.
Yesterday we arrived in Luang Phrabang, a UNESCO world heritage site. Next week, China.
