Ban Namxang

This morning, after finding a place to have breakfast, we went off a cave adventure! It was the coolest thing. We were picked up by the local version of tuk tuks, a pickup truck with benches in the back, and took a drive about 20 minutes long to a small village. We walked through the village filled with buildings on stilts, and cows roaming around everywhere to a little adventure "park" where we would do our cave exploration.

There was a large group ahead of us so we hung out at the restaurant and went swimming in a little hole, had a beer, and then ate a delicious lunch of rice wrapped in banana Leaves and chicken and veggies on a skewer. Followed by fresh watermelon and bananas. Delicious. Then it was time for the caving! I didn't bring my phone with me, so there aren't any pictures, but you'll just have to take my word when I say it was a must do.

The entire cave is filled with water, hence the tubes, so we plopped into the tubes and ducked under the rock hanging down only about 18" above the water and began our adventure. We were given headlamps to help see but of course mine was barely working. Which honestly made it more fun at first, though later I wished I had a stronger one so I could look around a bit more. Because it's so hot here - although cooler and much less Humid and much more pleasant than Siem Reap at a balmy 28 degrees instead of 35 - the cool water was very refreshing. The water wasn't all that deep, maybe 3 feet at the deepest and in some parts we had to walk it was so shallow. The ground was a combination of rocks, sand, and slime, and you couldn't see which one it would be so I preferred to float as much as possible. They also had ropes tied along the length of the cavern so that you could pull yourself along easily and also not get lost. Which was good because there were a few little side caves that were tempting to explore but we were good and stuck to the rope path only.

At one point there was a little side cave that Eric had discovered in the past that we did walk through. We left our tubes on a little beach and wandered through. When we turned a corner and couldn't see light from the main cave anymore we all shut off our headlamps and just enjoyed the darkness. True total darkness and silence, all you could hear was the sound of breathing and dripping water. Pretty neat. We didn't go out of our little side cave the same way as we came in and the return trip was interesting. It was very short, but took a decent amount of time to get through because you had to crawl like Gollum. We were joking that this was his home, that's exactly what it looked like! Some of the rocks were still growing too, they're super slimy and what not. Hope that people continue to respect that and don't start touching them.

After we finished our little detour we continued along the main cave until the ropes ended. Wish we could have explored more but of course that would have been quite dangerous! I particularly enjoyed the "rope tow" back as I was at the end of the group looking backwards with no lights. It was so cool just looking at the different types of rocks and enjoying some dark, dank, coolness.Read more