Luang Prabang, Laos
If there is one thing I have to say about yesterday's bike trek its fuck hills. There aren't a lot of things I wouldn't have done in this world for a Gatorade yesterday. I consider myself a fairly athletic person but on my way home I may have been on the brink of death. We decided to take a bike ride to a place called the Pak Ou Caves. This cave is a popular tourist spot which is about 30-35km (19-21 miles) outside of the main city of Luang Prabang and across the Mekong River. I figured on a the nice mountain bikes we rented that a 21 mile ride wouldn't be so bad. But fuck, was I wrong. It took us about three hours to get up to the caves after stopping for food once and at a small village on the way up.
The village seemed nice and quaint but creepily deserted aside from the few vendors and monks sitting around.. oh and the group of ten year old kids smoking cigarettes and drinking beer (wtf?). Their main export seemed to be what we like to refer to as "LaoLao" which is a traditional Lao alcohol made out of rice. It tastes bad, and makes you feel worse the next day, but damn is it a good time.This particular village specialized in LaoLao of the whiskey variety. We came upon one vendor who had bottles of god knows what so we stopped to take a look. It was something out of a bad science fiction movie with one of those crazy scientists with all sorts of vats and jars filled with body parts and dead things. Seriously. The main attraction was a row of four bottles up front. Coming in at about two feet tall, each these bottles each had some very disturbing things inside them, and are as follows (from left to right in the picture:
Jar #1 Bear Feet. Yes, I said bear feet. Someone took a bear, chopped its feet of and threw them in this oversized bottle.
Jar #2 This bad boy had about fifty or so bugs laying in the bottom of it. If I had to guess I would say they were oversized cockroaches. Gross.
Jar #3 Cobras. This one had a handful of full grown cobras in it.
Jar #4 Death Mush. The last jar had some rotted death mush of "your fucking guess is as good mine". So of course me and my buddy John smelled the stuff and holy shit, never again. We said thanks but no thanks and were on our way.
Finally we got to the caves after some awesome off roading on the bikes and took a boat across the river. To be honest the Pak Ou Caves were more like one big cave and was less than spectacular. The ride was much more beautiful and worth seeing than the actual caves themselves. All in all it was a successful day filled with gorgeous views, odd things, and some good ol' biking trails. So to summarize the trip... Fuck hills.
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