A few good monk shots from Luang Prabang before we hopped on a bus..
This riverside town is a backpacker hotspot, surrounded by mountains. We knew it would be pretty touristy, but we had to check out the climbing. It was great! We stayed here almost a week for climbing, caving and swimming. Strangely, the restaurants play more reruns of Family Guy and Friends than one could ever want to see, starting early in the morning until close. Here's our first sunset in town.
There are numerous sandwich vendors lined up on the street with identical menus. We went mainly to one woman who gave us free bananas with our breakfast baguettes and made us laugh- she fed us almost exclusively for the week.
Our journey to the climbing wall was quite the adventure. We walked 2km out of town, turned down a dirt road, crossed an unnerving bamboo bridge (top left) & paid the guy who built it ¢.25, walked through a village, traversed countless rice paddies, and trekked through the jungle a few minutes to pop out at some completely shaded & bolted limestone cliffs next to a river.
Some routes had big Banyan tree roots grown down along the rock.
Nearby 'secret canyon'
Sweet bolted chimney.
Thorn vine, it was crazy sharp, and Matt belaying our friend Stefan in the chimney.
On our second day climbing, we went with some friends into a HUGE cave nearby. The owner of this bar told us there is an exit on the other side so we tried to find it. You can see the tubers in this picture, Vang Vieng is very popular for spring break-like booze cruises down the river. Matt & I opted not to join the madness..although it's a beautiful place for it.
Mouth of the cave! With our climbing friend Stefan and three very silly French guys.
We explored this cave for about 3 hours, without finding the exit. At times we were wading through ankle deep or waist high water, and once we had to swim under a space about a foot high! We only found spiders and dead ends, so eventually we turned around. Cave shots:
Big spider..
Big hole..
Waist deep & then swimming..
The sweet man at the bar was waiting for us and gave us ride across the river so we could walk back to town. His buddy was in the kitchen BBQ'ing a fish and a bat for dinner...
More climbing! This approach involved more bamboos bridges, rice paddies, and a dry riverbed as well as an uphill hike to the cliff.
Matt's first-try-nailed-it whip clip. Who need a guidebook when the name of the climb is written on the cliff?
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