Day 158 – Muang Ngoy
Visiting remote villages
After breakfast, we were able to move into a smaller yet nicer room at Phetdavanh Guesthouse and Bungalows. After we moved, we headed into the empty town for an early lunch.
The streets of Muang Ngoy 
After this we walked towards Tham Kang Cave (sometimes called Kaang Cave), which has an entrance fee of 10,000 LAK / $1.63 AUD per person. The cave network goes deep into the mountain. If you go up the stairs on the left and then inside the cave, follow the left wall, which misleadingly looks like a dead end, but it actually opens up. There wasn’t anything too cool to see, besides the internals of a cave. We turned back around after 10 minutes, as most of the paths ended with a waterway, which we were not keen to test out. There are another 2 smaller caves, that don’t go too deep into the mountain.
We had to cross a bamboo bridge to get to the villages. Here we found a group of locals from the capital having lunch and drinking. One guy was very friendly and fluent in English. He started chatting to us and poured us a beer. It was a very friendly and cool experience. After a while we said our thanks and continued on our journey.
We walked up and down the hilly road until we reached the Ban Na Village. This is the closest village that trekking companies would usually go to. There are lots of treks that can be organised to here and other villages, but we elected to go ourselves. We actually wanted to go to 2 of the 3 close villages, but since we also wanted to get back before sunset, we decided to only go to one village. The village was nice, with a few small restaurants and accommodations, but we could not see any activity in the town. We went to a restaurant and had some juice, before heading back into town.
Once in town, we decided to try the Bee Tree Bar, which is at the far end of the main road. The bar is very cool with cheap drinks during happy hour and some nice vibes. We actually met another travelling couple who we kept meeting randomly since Nong Khiaw. We hung out with them for the rest of the night. Cheers!
