So, as you can see, I've been hanging out in Vang Vieng for awhile. I ended up adding extra days as I waited too long to book the hot air balloon ride. Who knew it would fill up ahead of time? I wanted to go with the French company "Above Laos." Reviews said it was just a tad more expensive, and nicer ambiance and who am I kidding, western world standards probably have a bit more thoughts about safety. The problem was the next sunrise flight wasn't available until January 5th. Another cyclist had recommended this activity here so I decided to wait it out. After all, I kind of like it here. Lots to do or I can do nothing and relax.
But first, officially Happy New Year!!! And to start my day off right, I got response to my musical idol, Corey Hart wishing me a Happy New Year. Always a treat when he acknowledges his fans and he is very good about this. This time, it was me 😃 I even got a selfie from him. He rarely smiles in his selfies which, but we are used to that. However, to top it off, after I gave feedback on his new podcast the next morning, he responded again joking about how he was smiling and too bad he didn't take selfies of this. Made my day!!
He had posted about "Hope in 2024" so I replied... My new year is off to a great start!
Later that day, my other idol, fitness expert Chris Powell, was doing a live and he always responds to the comments. Got another shout out about my travels. I'm two for two today. Yay me!
Didn't do much these days expect walked over to checkout Tham Chang cave. It's the closest to town and was about 3 miles RT and this....
Who thinks this is a good idea? There were 147 steps give or take a few. I was tired for some reason....
Inside these caves there are always altars. Now, what I want to know is if I was really thirsty, how much bad karma would it be to take one of these waters? hmmm
See that bridge? I had to pay $5,000 kip to cross it. It goes to the locals to help maintain it. I can think of a bridge or two where that might be helpful. I then paid another $15,000 to climb those stairs and go to the cave. Total, about $1
Then I went to get a foot/leg/back massage. First of all, if you don't know, I'm not a hugger (although I've gotten much better over the years.) I thought the back part would just be seated like at another location, but nooooooo. We go into a back room and I lay on a mat. The girl was literally kneeling on my butt and I think walking her hands/elbows up my bakc. Ummm, if I don't like hugs you can take a wild guess of what I thought of this! 😂 Awkward!
My grand adventure is tomorrow and then I'll be getting back to the biking portion of this adventure. I never did make it to this one cave where you enter on inner tubes with a headlamp and pull yourself through on a rope. I've done way better adventures than that cave tubing and something about being in the dark, in a cave and who knows what else (thinking snake here) I decided I'd be okay skipping that adventure. It's okay though, I've had fun here!!!
