Mayan Prophecy Countdown

I have had a few relaxing days and last night as I came home from the pub, I met up with Kate, one of the 6 dirt bike riders who I met the other week. So, I turned around and went back to the pub for another couple 🙂 She had split up with the guys for reasons I won’t go into, and was now riding alone, something we have in common, but we had arranged to go for a ride today, her on her 250cc and me on a rental scoot 🙂 One thing I had been planning on doing was to plant a Geocache here in Vang Vieng. Because the other one was too difficult for me, and probably many others who are not skilled rock climbers, I thought an easier one would be the go, the other one is called Above the Rice Fields. I had already tied it up with the owner of the Mesah View Hostel, and he would be the maintainer, so I registered one online, now I had to go and place the stash. The goal was to climb this small hillock called Pay Paok, it is on the other side of the river. If you look at the following picture you will see just to the right of the centre a small green hump which is about a 1/3rd height of the big lumps on the left

If I zoom in, it looks a bit bigger and on top of this hillock is a tall bamboo pole with a red flag on it, which is still a bit hard to make out, but take my word on it.

So we met up around 10 or so and headed across the toll bridge, we had no real idea which way to go, but this seemed to be a good start, to cross the river 🙂 Kate was quite happy to come along for the Geocache lesson and although she has not heard about it before, seems interested 🙂

We tracked around the other side for a while, but even asking the locals we could not find a direction to go in. I had to go back for fuel, for some reason the fuel gauge was now saying empty, it was full before!!! Also Kate had noticed the extreme cracks on the scoots front tyre. In the end I swapped the scoot out for another with better tyres before fuelling up. The toll bridge was only 20,000kip, but I found a smaller bridge to cross the river on, a bamboo bridge and this one was free 🙂

My thoughts about finding the hill had taken us to this hostel place, the huts you can see in the above picture. When I had asked about going to Pay Paok they had told us to go back along the river front and turn right(to the left in the picture as it is on the other side). While I had gone for fuel, Kate had gone exploring on her own. I once again stopped at this hostel and asked again, but this time I actually heard them saying Poukham, which is a cave up the road a ways. I explained by pointing I wanted to go to that hill, that is when they pointed to a pathway and said go that way, so I called up Kate, she found me and we headed off following a zig zag path through the dried out rice fields 🙂

This was the correct path, and there were all these bamboo poles to show the turns in the path, so it was an easy, but bumpy ride until we got to the parking area. It was now 11am and warm. We paid our 10,000kip entrance fee and proceeded to climb a mixture of bamboo ladders, very strong and solid, and sharp jagged rock falls. It was reasonably strenuous and a bit steep in patches, but the hand and footholds were numerous and unless you suffered vertigo, not that difficult.

Once I got to the top I found that the actual surface area up here is very small, it is a very sharp pointed rocky summit, with the final climb to the flag pole an actual 6ft climb. But, the views were worth it 🙂

So, I did find a location for the cache, hid it and recorded the location, it is called Grab The Flag GC42Y9P, but because it has not been reviewed yet, it has not been published and there is no info available nor link. Never mind, we headed back after a rest at the bottom of the hill and decided to call it a day, it was very hot and Kate wanted to go do some tubing. I had some lunch next door again after a nice cold shower then watched the balloons being inflated once again in the school yard across from the hostel.

Later that evening Kate and I and had some Indian food at the Nazim Restaurant [ N18 55.564 E102 26.956 ], and it was very nice too, well worth a visit 🙂

A few after dinner rums for me at the Aussie Bar while Kate headed back, but I was not really in a drinking mood and was happy to have an early night 🙂

Cheers from
TravellingStrom