The Loop @ Thakhek

After a night in the capital, we bought another local bus ticket to Thakhek and got picked up for the transfer to the bus station in the morning. The southern bus station was located in the northern part of the city (no questions please, we got no answer) and the tuk tuk driver did not seem to know the exact location of the bus station or maybe it was his first day in this job... Who knows! When he finally found the bus station about 30min after the planned departure time of our bus we were surprised he actually did not enter the bus station, but stopped the tuk tuk about 100m away from it telling us that the bus would pick us up from there. - ?!?!?!? - Once again, please don't ask because we have no explanation what this was for...

So a bus eventually arrived, we got the last two seats in the last row (just above the engine so we would for sure not get cold) and headed to Thakhek, supposedly a 5 hour ride, but of course it took us again a bit longer, we were boiling, lunch stop was only at around 15:15, but after all we made it to Thakhek before dark.

We headed to our accomodation and then tried to figure out where to best rent a proper motorbike for our trip. We did not want to get one of the cheap Chinese bikes we already had before as the suspension was pretty much not existent and our butts would for sure start hurting after max 2 hours. Given that we planned to spend 3 days on the motorbike we definitely wanted to avoid this. We had read about good places to rent bikes and had gotten some tipps from other travellers too so we walked to the city center (an easy 2km walk from our hostel) to run into some old friends from Luang Prabang at the bike rental shop.
At the end, we decided for a semi-automatic 125cc Honda with a much larger and thus more comfortable seat. And yes, you are never too old to learn new stuff. On this trip Moni learned to ride a semi-automatic motorbike! While at the beginning the change of gear (especially down) was not too smooth, with a bit of practice she did alright at the end :).

In the evening we checked the logbook of our accomodation where people who had done the loop wrote what they did, about the current road conditions, do's and dont's as well as reccomendations where to stay and what to see.
When we had breakfast the next morning, it started to rain. The rain stopped, then started again and just when we were about to leave it was pouring down. We decided to leave anyways and hit the road east of Thakhek (the loop is usually done counter-counterwise).

Before we continue the story about this trip, let us tell you a few words about traffic in Laos: the fact that we believe the concept of a driving license does NOT exist in Laos should already give you a rough idea of the conditions on the road. For motorbikes we are certain no driving license is required and as soon as kids can reach the ground from the seat of the motorbike they start driving. Most people do drive a motorbike, but some own cars, mainly 4WD pick-ups and seeing how people drive them we assume they only get an introduction of how to drive their car when they buy it, but no traffic rules or any other kind of driving lessons. People pass trucks on the most winding mountain roads and if you happen to be the unlucky driver on the other side of the road, you better slow down and drive as much right as possible because people will only honk and blink at you as if it was truely your fault that you are using "their" overtaking lane.
Motorbikes of the locals do in 95% of the cases have NO mirrors so when they want to turn left, overtake or just make a U-turn on the street they do not look at what is happening behind them, so it is as well your responsibility to anticipate what the Laotion driver ahead of you might do next.

Well, now back to the loop: a few kilometers out of town, the first few caves were already indicated. As it is impossible to do all of them we had decided for two of them. First stop was the Xieng Liap cave which can be visited by yourself and free of charge. If you follow the river through the rather big cave, you can do a tiny circuit and come out at another opening about 50m away from the entrance. Quite nice!

The second stop was just another kilometer down the road and called Tham Pha Inh cave. As it had been raining the short dirt path to the entrance was very muddy and slippery and the bike almost fell, but Alex managed to get us in clean and unhurt.
Tham Pha Inh is also free of charge and can be visited on your own. It is just a small cave with a little Buddha shrine, but our friends had told us that you can swim through the small tunnel at the bottom of the cave to arrive at a small lagoon.
So we put on our swimsuits, hid our backpack, took the Go Pro (an all-time companion on such trips) and swam the chilly waters to the other side. Over there we climbed a rock and enjoyed the silence of the spot, which we had for ourselves, and headed back after a couple of minutes.

In the afternoon we were only driving as there were no more worthwile stops on the way. When we approched Thalang, we quickly stopped at the "Dam Visitor Center" to give our butts a break and read about the dam that was built in the area a few years ago to create hydro-electric power.
Building this dam involved the re-settlement of many villages around as the area got widely flooded when the dam was finished.
We were driving through this area later on and the next morning and the landscape was very unique: flooded forests and dead trees rising from the calm lake-like waters.

In the late afternoon we arrived at our stop for the night, the well-known and much-talked-about Sabaidee guesthouse in Thalang. We had a little bungalow with a hammock, there was a petanque court and the atmosphere was really nice and relaxed. Pretty much all travellers there were sitting together, chatting, drinking and eating. It was quite an international mixture of single travelers, couples and even families with teenagers and one family with a 2-year old baby boy.

The next morning we headed further north and passed the rest of the spectacular flooded dam area. At some point we needed to turn left and enjoyed views of rough limestone karsts along the road. A bit further we left the road to go and look for another free of charge attraction, the Cold Springs we had read about, but not many people seemed to really find them.
We had to drive on a rough and bumpy, partly very slippery trail on an open grass area, got lost once, but thanks to the offline app maps.me found back to the correct "route".

At the end we had to stop the motorbike at a river which was definitely too deep to cross it with the bike and continued on foot. We crossed the river - if you had a good balance you could walk over a tree trunk in the river to the other side, if you did not you could wade through the waist-high water (like Alex). On the other side we continued for another 5-10min and finally reached the cold springs. Yet another very calm and peaceful spot for ourselves with a litttle pond of clear turquoise water to swim in. Guess what: the water of the cold springs was... cold, so we did not stay in too long, explored the area around a bit, jumped from a rock into the pool once again and then headed back.

For the afternoon we had planned to visit the Namson waterfall. To arrive there we had to cross a tiny pass from which we enjoyed great views to valley and then had to take another track to the falls. This time, we had to pay to access the waterfall, but the drive and walk through the forest alone was worth it. When we paid we asked the guy where to park our motorcycle and he just made a gesture signalizing us to carry on a bit.
Alright, so we drove on the small walking path through the jungle for another ten minutes, had to cross two creeks, drive over roots, stones, through mud and puddles, it was just hillarious. Alex enjoyed himself manoeuvring the bike all the way down to "the carpark". A bit after the carpark there were too many big stones on the path so we decided to park the bike under a nice big tree and walk the rest up to the waterfalls.

It was another good 40min walk, Moni was not too happy about all the mosquitos following her, but we made our way. The waterfalls did not have too much water, but were still nice to look at and then we made our way back to the bike through the mosquito jungle. The ride back to the main street was just as rough and bumpy, but see for yourself... ;)

After that we it was time to hit the road again to make our way to Konglor before dark. The road was in a much better condition than expected so we did have some time to we enjoy a nice sunset behind the limestone karsts. The last few kilometers into Konglor the road was getting really nasty with super big holes on the dirt track, so our butts were happy to get off the bike after such a finish. We decided to spend the night at a homestay, meaning staying, eating amd sleeping in the house of a local family. Conditions were basic, but we were used to that by then :).

The next day we got up early and headed to the other side of the small village to one of the main attractions in the area: Konglor cave.
Imagine a huge cave with a length of 7km on an underground river in the pitch dark.
Sounds scary? If you are afraid of the dark it might be a bit frightening indeed, but hell what a ride that was. The local boatmen take you in their wodden nutshells (max 3 people plus the boatman), you put on your headlight and go up the river through the cave, in the dark. You might ask yourself: well what is the point of going through a 7km cave if at the end you don't see a thing?! Just go and do it yourself, it is really impressive!

Plus, you do see some stuff: one part of the cave with lots of stalagmites and stalactites is accessible by foot. The boatmen drop you off there and you walk on a path through the colourfully lit cave for about 300m and then get on the boat again. If you have a strong headlamp (which we didn't) you can also admire the dimensions of the cave on the way: sometimes low and narrower and sometimes wide and high like a small cathedral. Especially the entrance on the other side was very nice to look at and to see how well the boatmen (ours was about 18-19 years old) know their way up and down the rapids was quite impresive as well. As the water was quite shallow we had to get off at some point (make sure to wear shoes that can get wet) and wait for the boatmen to drive the boat up the rapids without our weight.

After an hour upstream in the dark we reached daylight again and stopped at a small visitor square for a refreshment. There are some villages in the area that you can visit, but we decided against it because we still had quite a day ahead of us. The villages can be reached by road as well, but it is a very nasty gravel road which is often impassable, especially after rain. The fastest way to reach "civilisation" for the villagers is to take the boat through the cave...
We also took the boat back through the even darker cave as Moni's headlamp ran out of battery :). It was funny to meet other boats in the cave as the passengers with headlamps looked like some kind of animal or monster with glowing eyes in the dark moving in your direction.

Once back we decided to go to the Spring River Resort to cool off in the river and have lunch there before finally heading back to Thakhek.
It was still quite a way and our butts were pretty painful, so we were happy to arrive and return the motorbike.

After one more night in Thakhek we took another bus - this time a "VIP" bus - the next morning to go to Pakse in southern Laos.
Our next article will inform you about our excursion to the Bolaven plateau and our experiences at a local coffee workshop ;).

Stay with us and don't forget to check out the pictures and videos we took!! And of course: Merry Christmas to all of you!
Moni & Alex

Roadtrip Thakhek

Thakhek caves