Nong Khiaw

So the next leg is an 9 hour boat journey up river to a town called Nong Khiaw.
Sure you can get there by bus faster and cheaper but where's the fun in that?
There is a bridge just after you leave, and then at Nong Khiaw 9 hours later.
Loads of kids playing at the river bank as we go by and the scenery is great.
Nong Khiaw is tiny and quiet, kind of like every town in Laos.
We walk out to the caves where some of the comunists ran afairs when the americans were bombing, sure enough there was a big bomb crater at the entrance.
And boy did the americans bomb Laos, shhh, it was a secret war but they made Laos the most bombed country on earth.
All of the tinyest villages have loads of man sized bombs. They use them as fence posts garden ornaments and a source of scrap metal to make knives etc.

Anyway on the walk it started raining and all the leeches came out, yuk.
Big ones like an earth worms crawling end to end, creepy, and big balls of tiny ones, they crawl up your shoes, into you socks and leave nice little bloody wholes in your ankles when they leave.
It gets really slippy when it rains and I fell over, sore knee in pain lieing in a load of leeches and stinging ant, fun!
Anyway took it easy a read a book for the afternoon.

At night the bridge is guarded by guys with machine guns.