Nam Xong

Nam means river. We booked a day kayaking, visiting a cave, and tubing in an underground river. Just a little light exercise you understand.

We were taken 30 km upriver, where 4 of us, Yvonne, Mike, and a Korean girl called Jasmine, along with our guide, set off in two kayaks. Yvonne and Mike in one, Jasmine and our guide, Louin, in the other.

A paddle down the quite swiftly moving river xong soon brings us to a Buddhist shrine in a limestone cave where the water has carved what seem to be elephants into the rock!!  The temple bell is made from a bomb casing!!

A walk of a couple of km brings us to the mouth of the underground river. Equipped with head lamps, and a rubber ring, we find ourselves pulling along ropes into the cave against the current!!  Nice and cool, into the cave we go. Its like a tube where the rock has dissolved into a smooth ripple like surface. There are some quite sharp rocks, so we have to keep our wits about us. After about 30 minutes we come to the end of the rope system, let go and let the current take us back the way we came.
Looking at the walls of the tube Mike thinks of a small intestine... well you can guess the rest!!

After lunch we head back to the kayaks for a paddle of around 15 km, stopping once on a river bank, and once at a 'tubing' bar, for a drink. A tubing bar is where people grab a tuk tuk from the town to one of these bars upriver, about 10 km away. Then party with lots of booze, hire a tube (inner tube for a lorry tyre), sit in the tube and launch off into the river, to arrive some 30/40 minutes later, back in town. Yvonne and Mike were the oldest swingers in town....

Stayed for a drink, then back on the river for the last leg. Dispite moving down the river there is quite a lot of paddling, to avoid just submerged rocks, and manoeuvre through the occasional white water. Both enjoyed it, but quite tired and ready for a rest!!