Blogs from Tham Lot Kong Lo, South, Laos, Asia

* hundreds of kilometres of dirty roads in central Laos, done usually by motorbike within 3-4 days are commonly called 'The Loop' You probably know situations when you feel that you ought to do something just because a lot of people do it or/and just because you are already in some particular place so why not? Well this was one of those times I guess when we struggled with a decision whether to do some journey or not. From Pakse we headed to Takheak where we hoped to get more information about how to get to Kong Lo village – place where famous 7.5 km long cave is located. It was a very long journey (11h) by painstakingly slow buses operating on Lao time. The bus was a funny thing we must admit. It looked like ... read more

Saturday 12th February 2011 At 7am we boarded the local bus to Ban Khoun Kham with Lee and Louise. It took far longer than stated - 7 hours when it should have been 4 :o( It started raining as we got off the bus (shock) so we booked into the closest guest house and went for lunch at the only restaurant in town with our only friends in town. Walking in search of the Waterfall, we ended up in small local village and the Sainamhai Resort, which was mentioned in Louise’s Lonely Planet guide 3.8km out of town, unfortunately in the wrong direction. We stopped for a drink deciding it was too late to find the waterfall. When it started getting dark while walking back along the lonely road, we were kindly offered a lift part ... read more

After getting off the Vientiane bound bus at Vieng Kham along route 13 we set off in search of sawngthaew - these are ‘jumbo’ tuk tuks that have a fixed route and a fixed price per person; they pretty much operate like a bus. We found one heading to Ban Khoun Kham also known as Ban Na Hin and made the 41km journey east along route 8; we arrived at the central market and headed off in search of a bed. We can’t remember the name of the place where we stayed but it was really nice and cost 80,000 kip. Ban Khoun Kham is a pretty cool little place, it’s very much a one street ‘town’ with a market at the end, so we had a wander in search of food and an ice cold ... read more

I left Savannakhet for Tha Khaek just to go to a good jump off point for the famous Tham Kong Lo cave. So I went from one shithole to another... Tha Crap was a real piece of shit town and I stayed in the worst dump so far. I wanted cheap and I got cheap - a crappy and dirty room for 35 000 kip with a shared "bathroom" with the dreaded squat toilet and filthy floor. I prayed to unknown powers that I wouldn't get the "urge"... Luckily my prayers were answered. While in this crappy town I tried to get some info on going to the cave as I had nothing of the sort. I noticed a place where a bunch of buses were parked and walked in. A happy guy greated me and ... read more

Satisfied with the touch of quaint, small city hospitality afforded to us by Vientiane, we hopped on a tuk-tuk to the Southern Bus Station for the 7am bus towards Lak Sao but alighted at the market in the small and simple village of Ban Na Hin, SE of Vientiane. This 1 road town is an ease to navigate and we walked back along the road amongst Buffalo, Cows, Chickens, Goats and Pigs to one of the two available guest houses - XokXai Guesthouse is a comfortable, clean yet basic abode a little out of town run by a local family - we got a sizable double for 40,000kip (4USD). Desipite San's onset of a pretty serious dogdy tum, we chose to make the 2 hour walk through the rain forest to Tamsanam waterfall (5000kip entry payable ... read more