Attacks for Apples: The Great Monkey Adventure

So when we travel we don’t necessarily travel with a destination in mind. We have a rough idea of a route, but not a destination. By which I mean, we leave on city with the intention of going to the next largest city along the route, not knowing what or if there is anything to see or do there.

When we arrived in our current city, Savannakhet, two days ago we knew a little bit about it. There is a dinosaur museum and a national museum. While we were taking our stroll through the town later that day however we found out there is a lot more to offer. We found the tourist information office (Which in Laos is simply a rip-off tour operator who may or may not give out information for free) and outside we saw a map with some places of interest.

One of these places of interest was “monkey forest”.

So, us being us, we got on the bikes and went straight there the following day. The ride was long and arduous, with potholes big enough to hide medium sized farm animals and deep enough to snap the front suspension on the bikes, making the ride a little unpleasant,  apart from some off-road sections we found, like when we rode through a pool of water next to a dam with a lake behind it.

After an hour and a half of trying to find it we finally got there. At first we spotted just a couple of little monkeys up in the trees hiding, making me think that this place was going to feel more like a zoo than a true “monkey forest.” Talia took some of our packed lunch apples out of our day pack and gave small chunks to the nearest monkey, but within a couple of minutes, or maybe it was seconds (it all happened so fast!) we were almost overrun. Monkeys came from EVERYWHERE and gathered all around us.

When a monkey was displeased with us, it bared it’s teeth in a sort of menacing smile, and then I remembered that I had heard somewhere before that bearing your teeth is a sign of aggression to most primates. Not smiling is difficult when you’re surrounded by such amusing creatures but we did our best so as not to freak them out.

"Give me the precious...apple!"

Instead, they freaked us out. There were points of our walk through the forest when we were genuinely frightened. Check out this video of tons of monkey running out of the forest at us.

After that, big papa came over and scared off all the other monkeys and continued to hassle Talia for apples. At one point, she was pretty scared and I had to talk her through getting out of the situation.

We walked along the path and ran into this. 

Because, you know, why not?

A bit later we decided to eat our packed lunch sandwiches at a table outside a Buddhist temple. Of course, the monkeys wanted in.

When we had finished lunch near the Buddhist temple, Ricky was feeding a piece of apple to a large female, but she apparently wasn’t very impressed, because she grabbed his arm, scratching him and drawing blood.

Before "the incident."

 Then, we noticed a baby monkey had picked up a plastic bag that had fallen off the table. I took it away so it wouldn’t get hurt and because I didn’t want to leave trash there, and the baby’s mother freaked out and jumped at me, baring her teeth. We decided it was time to go.  

We left the temple and headed back down the road to the start of the forest, and the monkeys from the temple followed us out and down the road.

It was odd, and we soon discovered that monkeys and buffalo are BFFs.

BFFalo's

We fed the monkeys a bit more at the clearing where we entered the forest. One of the monkeys was brave enough to touch a human. Talia called him Mr. Softy-hands.  He was so sweet looking up at her for an apple.

The sweetest little beggar.

But as soon as her back was turned, he jumped up and grabbed the apple core out of her hand! To add to the insult of being robbed, two monkeys decided to make sweet love on Talia’s motorbike, while another tried to get into my water bottle and my backpack.

And then goats wanted in on the action.

All in all the day was exciting and terrifying. And just to clarify, these were indeed wild animals. They were in no way tame. They were sort of like pigeons. They’ll take what humans give them, but they’re not going to hang around to be picked up or played with. Unlike pigeons, however, they have teeth and fingernails.

But aren’t they adorable?

Born to be Wild: The Super Deluxe Mega- Montage!

You've been waiting for it, and here it is. We have painstakingly put together this unbelievably astounding montage, to the tune of Born to be Wild, by Steppenwolf, the winner of our latest competition.

So enjoy the latest creation. It's WILD!!!

Special Announcement! Motorbike Song Winner!

We have selected a winner for the best motorbike trip song to listen to!

Born To Be Wild!

However, we've changed the prize. Since Ricky's guitar has a big crack in it, we decided that an acoustic version of the song might not be so much of a prize as it would be a punishment. Instead, you get...wait for it... a super deluxe mega-MONTAGE! With the song playing! It's going to be amazing! And since tomorrow we're going to to a monkey-forest, we may get some good footage for the "wild" bit of the song!

Now, I know you're all anxious to see this epic piece of filmography, but you'll just have to wait. While you do, you can watch this:

360 Degrees: The Best Kind of View

Well, there's not a whole lot to report right now. We're a little tired today, after the outrageously exciting time we had last night watching the Expendables 2. Ricky liked the explosions; I liked the Chuck Norris joke told by Chuck Norris.

Now it's my turn: I'm off to pick up some ice-cream before we lay down to watch Gone with the Wind. Ricky's never seen it, and I haven't seen it in ages. He may hate it, but frankly, my dear, I don't give a damn.

I'll leave you now with some sweet sweet pictures Ricky took. The first one is  at the stupa on a hill in the center of Luang Prabang.

Click here to see it. It's a 360 view, so feel free to roam!

Here's the other one. We stopped on the road to get a pic of the surroundings. Once again, it's 360!

Enjoy!

Into the Light: Kong Lor Cave, Part II

If you’re just joining us and haven’t read part one of the fantastic caves of Kong Lor, go and do that now.

I’ll wait.

Ok, welcome back.

After the eagle soared above our heads, we continued a little further upriver until we got out at a small ‘jetty’. It was basically a mound of dirt we had to climb to get out of the boat and onto the shore.

A view from our canoe after leaving the cave.

As we walked up onto the shore there was a small shack where some of the locals and some other guides were waiting. We dropped off our life jackets and started towards the Natane village. We walked along a dirt road and saw that we were clearly in a massive bowl shaped valley, filled with rice paddies all around and with tall karst rocks surrounding them. If any of you have ever seen the movie “The land before time” you’ll have a rough idea of where we were!

The road into the village

The mountains surrounding us.

As we walked further we started to see some signs of life in the form of a few houses on stilts, dozens of chickens and ducks and children, all running around with limitless abandon. It was quite a sight! As we entered the town we realized that this was one of the most remote places we’d ever been.  We asked one of the locals if we could get some food somewhere and as it turned out he was a pleasant guy called Kane.

Unfortunately there was nothing to eat in this tiny tribal village (in hindsight I kinda feel like an idiot for asking) but Kane did lead us up a small ladder into an old woman’s house. The old lady was very pleasant and offered us a few beverages.

Next thing we knew we were sitting in this woman’s home with a sleeping baby swinging next to me in a basket, sipping a Beer Lao with this old lady, a Lao guy called Kane and little naked two year old running around us.

Talia and our hosts in Natane Village. Kane is the second from the right, and his hand is in front of the little boy.

We sat there for a while and had broken conversations in whatever English Kane could speak, while I tried to teach this two year old how to touch his nose with his tongue.

A typical house in the village.

Soon it was time to leave and catch our boat back through the cave. So we bid farewell to Kane, the old lady and the two year old, with his tongue firmly pushing towards his nose to the point where he was leaning his head back. We waded our way through the ducks and chickens, back down the dirt road and back onto the boat, satisfied with our visit to a Laotian tribe in a hidden valley behind a 7km underground abyss!

We got back onto the boat and headed back through this amazing cave, through more rapids (but downstream this time) getting splashed and dripped on until we came out the other side. 

As we passed through the cave bats flew past us and in the blckness we could roughly see some clusters of sleeping bats, hanging in the dark corners of the cave. As we left the mouth of the cave, waiting for our eyes to adjust to the light, we thought how very much like a dream the whole experience was as we tried to recall the exact shade of darkness it was in the cave, but it was already escaping us.

What a day, we thought, and we hopped back on the bikes and started back for home. Just as some thunder clapped in the distance.

Yep, you guessed it.

Somehow we had managed to leave ourselves stranded 50 odd kilometers away from shelter in a thunder storm. But this wasn’t just a bit of drizzle. The rain came down hard and heavy, and as we drove through it the raindrops hit us with less of a splash and more of a bruising feeling. It was like heaven declared war on earth and opened fire with billions of bb guns. At some points I got a drop of water in my eye, and DAMN did it sting. 

At one point we had enough and we pulled over under an unfinished stilted house on the side of the road, where we thought we could wait it out. Then the water started rising. We found some planks and put our kickstands and back wheels onto them so they wouldn’t get stuck. Meanwhile the water was rising up past our ankles!

We waited and waited for around an hour when the rain finally seemed like it had moved on and we continued down the road back to our hotel, but after a few minutes we had caught up with the rain again and despite trying to persevere for five minutes or so we couldn’t take it anymore and we pulled in to a small restaurant. Clothes soaked and dripping, with my face and neck sore from the raindrops, we stopped off and had ourselves another hot noodle soup along with some weird red meat on skewers (we didn’t ask what it was, and they didn’t answer).

Dried off and ready we headed back towards the village where our hotel was, passing herds of buffalo, chickens crossing the street (we didn’t ask why, and they didn’t answer) until we got home.

Our experience of the Kong Lor caves was amazing and we loved it.