Vieng Xai and Sam Neua

Photo to the left of one of the entrances to a Pathet Lao cave (the house on the outside built later after the bombing)

Thanks guys for all your comments. It's awesome to hear (or is it see?) from you.

May 1 -3
Alot of the people we met in Phonsavan were heading for Hanoi afterwards. We were the only ones heading off into the wilderness, even more north -easterly. We were running out of time in SE Asia and were already 2 weeks into our Vietnamese visa. But we didn't want to leave Laos, we loved it... so we went to find the caves where the Pathet Lao lived for over a decade under constant bombardment, everyday and every night by the US. The photo below is a field near the caves that still has bomb craters.

The bus to Sam Neua was 9 hrs of winding mountain roads, but we enjoyed it, there were so many villages to see, little stilt houses with adorable snotty nosed kids playing everywhere, people in the rice paddies, girls using those big weaving looms, people squatting everywhere to chat...
The forested mountains may have looked peaceful, and still, devoid of humans, but as soon as you got closer it came to life.
We stayed in Sam Neua 2 nights doing Vieng Xai as a day trip.
At night all the kids would run around in gangs catching moths and putting them in plastic bottles, we have no idea what they did with them, they laughed when I mimed eating them, whether that's because that's a silly idea or I'm dud mime we don't know. But they caught heaps, they'd come up and say hello and proudly show you their bottles.

On the second night with not many other edible options we went to a little noodle cafe for dinner and the waitress/cook/owner got confused with our order and brought us a plate of steamed rice, fried rice and sticky rice, instead of stirfried chicken.


Vieng Xai was a ride in a tuktuk for another hour through bamboo villages and vegetable patches and water buffalo. ViengXai is in the most beautiful valley surrounded by limestone caves and its stunning scenery everywhere you turn... Its hard to believe it was under constant bombing for a decade.
The limestone caves hid over 20,000 Pathet Lao forces and their families and there was a hospital, a theatre, a bakery, a lolly factory, schools.. We had heard about it when we read a book about Laos and the overthrow of the royal family,and the caves sounded amazing. All the Pathet leaders that hid there are now in, or have been, in parliament.
We visited the Presidents house and cave, their meeting room and saw their cave kitchens and car garages and the hospital. The caves protected them from the bombings that occured every day and the Americans never knew where they were.. farmers would come out in the cover of night to farm fields!
The Pathet Lao finally came out of their caves when the bombings stopped in the mid seventies, and were able to build mansions next to their old cave pads. The even named Vieng Xai the capital of Laos, until they toppled the king in Luang Prabang a few years later and moved the capital to Vientiane. The photo to the left is of one of the leaders bedrooms in the cave. And below is a car garage!

We met a cool Australian lady Meg whose helping the Laotians tour guides who take you around the caves and our tour guide Hien was very friendly and curious about Australia. The photo to the right is another cave entrance that lead into the leaders main conference room.

The next day back in Sam Neua was the beginning of our epic 17hr journey to Hanoi. We got to the bus station at 7 am to get our bus... but were told by a man that our bus to Vietnam wasn't running today.. WHAT?!! It only ran once a week. He didn't know why it hadn't come ''It's in Vietnam" he shrugged. "But" the man said, you can get on my tuktuk to the border if you like...Ok we thought, but the tuk tuk was full, 25 people full. But it was the only tuktuk for the day so on we squashed. It was a huge relief when 3 people got off an hour later, but then we went to pick up 5 more people....Jon ended up sitting on the roof with the luggage, ohh how I wished I could've been up there too. The photo of Jon is of him holding on to the tuktuk for the first part of the trip before he got on the roof.
So for three hours we sat with an extremely fresh and aromatic hairy leg of meat, cigarettes, pesticides, fishfeed, a tonne of luggage and like 27 people... in a tiny little tuktuk.
The only good thing that happened was that when we got to the border at lunch time, all the border officials were mega hungry and got us through from Laos to Vietnam in the time it takes to boil the water for their beef noodle soup.
But then there was the bus driver from hell on the otherside in Vietnam, who takes all the awards for craziest speed demon maniac ''who says you can't overtake an ambulance with sirens on'' driver . Who pelted down tiny little windy villages roads also populated with huge logging trucks, in possibly the most rundown bus in Vietnam still in service..(the roof leaked when it rained, and created a mini lake in the bus, drowning our backpacks. Our friends window fell off, there were nails sticking through our seats) but that's another story.

The back of the tuktuk from Sam Neua.

And Jon on top of the tuktuk, smiling because he is happy he is not inside.