tham kong lo

Drip, splash; drip, splash. The makings for an otherworldly vacuum of reality are thus. Bulbous, calcified spears of gravity-minding and gravity-defying minerals reach towards their opposite. The methodical persistance of nature overtakes me. Such simple processes, ad infinitum, sum to a fine work of art, a mind-boggling complex organism, or, in this case, vacuous caverns of delicate water-sculpted trim.

In a single tree dugout canoe we skim across the invisible river water. From the errant headlamp shine of our guides, I can barely make out the wall edges and forms surrounding me. Beauty is present, I know, with or without direct visual confirmation.

At times football field dimensioned, at others road width, the cool empty spaces race over me. I half expect to see stars peeking out above me - but not, we are in the 7km long Tham Kong Lo cave in central Laos, Khammouan province. An hour of submersion in what must feel as close to a vaccum as one could get.

Our vessel births us into wide eyed jungle framed by those porous crass crags of limestone. A short walk to a 30 person village reveals life in this new reality. Men, woman, children hard at work among the stalks of rice that will feed them in days to come. Eyes of curious children poke out from above the side-walls of raised bamboo houses. Domesticated animals, covered in mud, balk at our relative sterility.

Back from the cave, we stay with an older Lao couple and sit around near concrete mixers with the younger generation.

some naga luring

The end of Buddhist lent means many things - an end to the rainy season, the traditional time for monks to come back out of the temples they have been meditating within, and boat racing festival.  The week long build-up and three day festival is steeped in myth - it was once explicitly held to lure Naga, the hallowed serpent dragon, out from the drying rice paddies back to the Mekong. 

These days, it is a time for villagers from the nearby provinces to travel in throngs to the riverfront of Vientiane, where temporary food stalls and vendors set up mats and booths and scaffolding to sell and yell about their items.

Fourty person dragon boats, made of a single sacred tree and blessed with colorful adornments, race down the Mekong. The synchronized paddling and counting is critiqued by the beer-drenched, sticky rice-engorging fans on the shore.

north country

vegetated tufts off extruded limestone protrude above mossy paddy rice carpets. This is the stuff of ancient coral shells, and generations of atmospheric pressure, together providing such dramatic terrain.

 
Outside the town of VangVieng, about 4 pothole ridden, washed out, minibus hours north of Vientiane. Acrobatic cave shuffling, dry stream bed following, and kayak descending of Mekong tributaries.

REDD thoughts here.

Love kyle