Small caves, Big caves, Buddha caves...

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After leaving Vientiene we decided to miss out on the elephant salt lick because we just felt we weren't up to the mission to get there so headed straight for Ban Nah Hin which is the jumping off point to the 7km cave of Tham Kong Lo. Well when we say we headed straight there we actually had to get off the bus at Vieng Kham and hitch hiked the remaining 30km there as there were no buses at that time of day.

Ban Nah Hin & Tham Kong Lo

On arrival in Ban Nah Hin we thought we'd made a terrible mistake when most of the guesthouses we tried were full up, thankfully the last one was free and the cheapest too so we unpacked in our bamboo hut and enjoyed a meal in their restaurant accompanied by a crazy French Couple who entertained us for the evening.

It's about 50km down a dirt road to reach Tham Kong Lo, the 7km long cave and we had high hopes of hiring a moto and doing this ourselves stopping off a the various villages on the way. This was not meant to be though. There are no places to hire bikes in the village so we had to make do with a jumbo tuk-tuk there. This wasn't so bad as it was also the local courier service for all the villages on the way so we enjoyed seeing what got dropped off along the way. We weren't so happy though when he pulled into the petrol station and filled up about 10 containers of petrol, that in itself wasn't the problem but we got concerned when one of the passengers sparked up a cigarette and started puffing away in the station with us surrounded by flammable liquid!

It's very easy to get a boat ride though Tham Kong Lo, you just pay the boatman 110,000kip at the entrance and off you go.. The journey though is quite awesome, not only is the cave just over 7km long but it's over 100m high in some places and really takes your breath away.. well what you can see of it by headtorch anyway! The water is very shallow and in about 5 places we had to get out the boat and wade though the water while the boat boys pulled our kayak across the gravel but it all added to the experience. At one point they pulled over and we got to see another cave just off the main one where pretty lights have just been added to illuminate the slagtites & stalagmites which are beautiful.

It took about 1 hour to get though the cave and our eyes had to adjust to the bright sunlight on the other side as we pulled up to a small village. We rested there for a short while then headed back to return to the other side again, rescuing a Polish couple on the way who's boat had lost their propellor in the dark! This is a great trip, it's a bit of a mission to get there but so worth it as there can't be many people who can say they've been in such a huge cave!

We had planned to stay the night in the local village but when we found a tuk-tuk driver waiting around we decided just to leave and try to head as far south as we could make it that evening. The tuk-tuk dropped us back in Ban Na Hin and from here we decided to try to catch a lift back to Vieng Kham. We had hoped for a free ride but the first thing to come along was a jumbo tuk-tuk complete with it's load of a tractor in the middle so we squeezed on here and went back to highway 13 to try out luck heading south to Tha Khaek that night. It actually took us quite a while of standing on the roadside before we got a ride, this was much to the amusement of the locals who were all interested to see if we managed it or not. Luckily he was going all the way to Tha Khaek so we jumped in the back of the pickup along with his generator delivery and tried to make ourselves comfortable in the dark. It wasn't too long before he stopped to drop off the generator and his 2 passengers and this left 2 spaces in his cab so he invited us to join him which was a result. He was a local man who'd studied in Bulgaria which we found quite strange, he didn't really speak any English but did speak Bulgarian so needless to say we didn't say much on the way! Our ride got even better when he not only asked for no money but also offered to drop us off whereever we wanted in the town.. we need more rides like this! We didn't want to put him out too much so opted for the first guesthouse we saw and walked the rest until we found a good one to suit our budget.

Tha Khaek

The town of Tha Khaek hasn't really got much in the way of sights so it's the surrounding area that people come here for. Around the town is a range of limestone karsts complete with hundreds of caves that you can explore so we hired out a moto for the day and went off to have a look for ourselves.

Our first stop was the Buddha Cave. This cave is particularly interesting because it was only discovered in 2004 by a local man who followed a bat into it. Inside this cave he found over 229 tiny bronze Buddhas which has now become a place of pilgrimage for hundreds of people all over Asia. It is thought that they date back 600 years and they have no idea who put them there or why. It is understandbly very strict to go inside the cave and Sophie had to rent a skirt to be let in. We actually felt a bit uncomfortable inside as there were a lot of people worshipping and you can't really get up close to the buddhas and certainly can't take photographs which was a shame so we didn't stay too long.

There are another 4 caves you can visit along the road so we made our way to the next one which took a bit of time to find after asking a local man. We had to walk a bit to get to this one and LP had described that you could walk though it to a valley to swim on the other side which sounded nice on a hot afternoon. Remember from previous blogs that Sophie isn't that fond of dark caves so when we got there and found was a tiny dark entrance with no light to be seen at the other end she refused to go in. After Dale trying and failing miserably to get her to go in we returned back to the bike and decided to go for a drive instead. Dale was left wondering why Sophie bothers to come up with these ideas when she knows she won't like it when she gets there!

The drive was quite nice going through the karsts but after an hour on the bike our bums started to protest so we turned round and went back again. On the way we decided to try one more cave, Tham Sa Pha In which was probably the best of the day. This one is rumoured to have magical healing powers, we haven't seen any evidence of that yet but it was a nice cave all the same! It was all decorated in pretty flags and streamers with a lagoon at the bottom, Dale went to explore in this one leaving Sophie to wait at the entrance in case anything happened!

The following day we decided to leave Tha Kahek and head to Savannakhet where we'd read that there was a good moto 'loop' to do which we were looking forward to...

Savannakhet

Ahhh Savannakhet, Savannakhet.. a strange old old town! Yet again as with every Laos town we had the usual scam of the bus station being a million miles out of town so had to get a tuk tuk to our guesthouse. Savannakhet is still very much an old colonial town with little streets containing delapidated buildings which makes for nice exploring. Sadly once you've done this which we did in a few hours in the searing heat we were left a little stumped...

We did find the dinosaur museum though which is worth a visit here just for the creator who works there! He is a real character and takes every individual visitor around the museum, even taking them into a back room where he lets you hold dinosaur bones which are 65million years old! We found this all very exciting and really enjoyed the visit there yet again learning lots about things we would never have known... did you know dinosaurs had been found in Laos??

As we said we'd planned to hire a moto to do the loop around Savannakhet which was in the LP, this included a Monkey Forest, various villages and pretty countryside but in order to do this you need wheels.. which there are none of in Savannakhet! We hunted high and low with no help from anyone and were really disappointed to learn it just wasn't going to be possible so yet again Laos had let us down in being able to explore it's beautiful country.

The other strange thing about Savannakhet is the food here! For somewhere which is nice but hardly a real tourist hot spot the food choices seem pretty odd. In our one evening here we really had to hunt high and low for somewhere to eat.. all the places in LP didn't exist anymore. In the end we found 2 restaurants.. one of which was a French Restaurant with an average dish costing around 150,000kip and the other still being quite posh but we managed to at least get a pizza for 55,000kip! We really had to wonder who eats in places like this?

So again we packed up our things and left for our next Southerly destination of Pakse where we could only hope that we would be able to do what we hoped because we were now feeling a little frustrated that at every turn we seemed not to be able to get out and about in Laos...

Pakse & Tat Lo

At last a town where we can do all we want to do! This town has got it spot on with great accommodation, great food, moto rentals etc etc.. sadly with this comes lots of backpackers but you can't always have it your own way! We got a great room here right next to the river so decided to stay more than a few nights and make the most of it after flying though so many places over the last few days.

Well when we say we stayed, we actually rented out a bike the following day to take the 100km+ journey through the Bolaven Plateau to Tat Lo. The ride there was a great one passing many beautiful waterfalls on the way. The Bolaven Plateau is also home to the coffee growers of Laos and you can drive through the plantations to see how they do it. LP advised going to a local village where they had a shop so we drove the 17km there along a very bumpy dirt road only to be greeted with.. nothing! Typical of LP it was well out of date so we had a look at a few of the coffee bushes and drove back again!

After a couple of hours on the bike driving across the plateau then along a dirt road we just hoped was the right way we arrived in Tat Lo. This is a small village that has become another of Laos's backpacker retreats. It's a beautiful small village set next to a waterfall and is still very much the true Laos with friendly laid back people, a few small gueshouses and restaurants and not much else except chilling out. We booked a small bungalow for our 1 night there and went to relax on the terrace with the obligatory bottle of Beer Lao to go with dinner.

The next morning brought some early monsoon showers so we just exlored the local waterfalls a bit before venturing on the 82km ride back to Pakse. Thankfully we had our ponchos packed as halfway there the heavens really opened and it hammered down, although we sheltered for the worst of it we couldn't stay all day so had to spend the final 40 odd kilometres driving in the rain which really is no fun at all!

We really enjoyed Pakse so decided to spend another day there having a washing & internet day, we love these days sometimes as we can sleep in until when we want and literally just sit around doing nothing. It's essential to add in these days here and there as it completely exhausts you when you feel you constantly have to be on the go taking in everything around you day after day.

So washing done and emails sent we made our way to the bus station (7km outside town!) the following morning to catch a ride to our final Laos destination, and one we were really looking forward to after hearing so many good reports.. the 4000 islands...

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Photos

Inside Tham Sa Pha In
a holy cave with magical healing powers

Cow not wanting to move
after coming though the cave from the village on the otherside

Dale inside the cave
It was very dark