Wednesday, October 16, 2013

Epic Adventure Day 7: Not so Epic, but there was kayaking!

On the morning of the 7th, I got ready and waited for the bus to come pick me up to take me to the kayaking tour. (It was late, of course!) The trip started in an only about half full 15 passenger van, but we were quickly transferred to a songtaew that had kayaks loaded on top. There were only five of us in the group so it wasn't too bad. 

When we arrived at the river, the kayaks were unloaded and I realized that since I was alone, and the others were couples, I'd be sharing the two person sea kayak with our guide. He was a pretty muscular guy, so I decided this wasn't a bad thing. 

After working at Outward Bound I'm accustomed to a safety first approach and found it quite odd that there was no safety kayaker and no helmets. Then again, the river was flat enough that we were in sea kayaks, not river kayaks, so maybe it wasn't that big of a deal. 

With no instruction about how to paddle or what to do if you fell out, we hopped in and started paddling our way down the Nam Ou river and eventually meeting the Mekong.  After two days on the slow boat, you'd think I would have seen enough countryside views from the river, but it was really nice to be out in the sun and actually doing something physical instead of just sitting. We passed a couple tiny villages where half clothed (or sometimes not) children shouted greetings to us as they jumped and splashed in the water. 

We pulled off to the side at one point for a break and enjoyed a little beach time before heading on to the caves. (I got some pretty good pics along the way, but they're on the waterproof comer and will have to wait til I get back to a computer to be posted.) Once there, we hauled our kayaks out of the water, found a place to sit and have our lunch and then headed in to check out the Pak Ou Cave.

Perhaps it's because I've actually been caving before, or that I've been to a lot of temples and seen A LOT of Buddhas, but I have to say I was pretty underwhelmed by the cave. I probably could have seen everything in about 10-20 and frankly none of the Buddhas were terribly impressive. 




There was a pretty sweet view of the river, but apart from that, kind of a let down. 


One of the other girls expressed the same sentiment saying, "I wish you could see how I pictured this in my head. We were going to kayak into the cave where there would be an island with a giant temple in the middle and all around would be the Buddha statues." Yep! That's the tour I wanted to go on. 

We returned to the kayaks and kept paddling towards the Whiskey Village. At a certain point I put my paddle down to get some water and the guide asked if I was tired. I told him it wasn't that my arms or shoulders were tired from paddling, but my hands were sore and fairly close to getting blistered. He told me to sit back and sing a song and that he would do the work and then started ferociously paddling. When one of the other girls shouted, "you're so lucky!" I told her she should have booked the luxury cruise, it was MUCH nicer. 

At the Whiskey Village I was once again, underwhelmed. When we arrived the locals had already made the whiskey for the day. Our guide showed us the giant clay pots they use and tried to explain the distilling process but it obviously just wasn't the same. We did get to sample a couple things. One was a sweet tasting pink liquor that you could pour over ice and enjoy alone.



The 100 proof whiskey on the other hand, was the worst tasting thing I've ever had. Worse than Costa Rica's guaro, worse than Peruvian Pisco. Awful!!
And of course they had stuff with snakes, scorpions, etc in it, all of which claimed to have extra abilities beyond getting you wasted. 


I thought the trip would be redeemed by the shopping, but the shops offered very little and everything was the same. We returned to town and I went back to my hostel mostly disappointed, but glad to have gotten a little workout in on the kayak at least. 

I decided to treat myself to a pedicure (worst pedi ever) and picked up a couple small things for myself in the market before calling it a night. 

Cost: 190,000kip + 90 baht ~ $27.26USD (not including the tour which was included in yesterday's sum)

Labels: , , , ,