Mong Ngoi

4/1/2011
-Took a boat to Mong Ngoi, which is only accessable from the river, an hour north of Nong Khiaw the town has no electricty and appears to consist entirely of guest houses, shared a 30,000 kip bungalow with Sebastion so wound up only spending 15,000 per night.
-on the boatride, they made us stop and get off and walk for about twenty minutes while the boat went ahead with all of our stuff, because the river was too low and there were big rapids.
-not much to do, ate some food, sat around and shot the shit with various folks.
-Mong Ngoi was heavily bombed during the war, everywhere you see fences and houses made out of pieces of US bombs, its weird.
-chilled out, finished my bottle of Red Bear whiskey, and played cards before bed by candlelight.
4/2/2011
-ate some breakfast, on the way back, saw signs pointing to a cave, so we went up to check it out, wound up hiking to the top of a mountain, with great views of the river and town. 

-on the way up saw a very small entrance to a cave, that appeared to be collapsed, continued hiking until we got to the top then figured the entrance we saw must be the cave. so we went in. Unfortunately i wasn't planning on going caving so didn't have a flashlight, only had really crappy headlamps they gave us at the entrance, at least we had these, because the cave was huge and pitch black, went back maybe 500 meters, we went all the way to the back, saw some big millipedes, and lots of awesome stalactites and stalagmites. very cool.
-went back to town bought some candles for when the power went out, as it inevitably did every night at 10 when the generators shut off.
-ate some indian food, watched a big party going on down the street, found out it was a funeral that had been going on for days.
-bact to the guest house for more cards by candlelight
4/3/2011
-woke up early, tried to catch a boat to Mong Kah, but i was the only one who wanted to go and they tried to make me charter at private boat for 1,000,000 kip, so wound up going back to Nong Khiew, there were so many people trying to go they wound up sending two boats, sebastian and i had to switch boats at the last minute.
-while we were on the way our boat developed a serious leak which started to fill the boat and flooded the engine they made us get off on a beach while they tried to repair the boat. after a couple false starts (the engine would not stay on) and a couple of other beach landings, they finally got it running, and went back to Nong Khiew at full tilt with one dude in back frantically bailing out the water which threatened the engine, even though the boat was just as full as the time they made us walk, they just powed through the rapids.
-arrived in Nong Khiaw a little later then expected, walked to the bus station to try and get transport to Udomxai, but by the time i arrived at the bus station the minivan headed that way was already packed to the gills. so wound up having to spend another night in Nong Khiew, found a nice private bungalow right on the river and spent the rest of the day chilling out by myself.