Ban Khoun Kham & Tham Kong Lo (12-13 Feb 2011)

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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 of the way in back of a pick-up truck.

Sunday 13th February 2011

The 9 am bus we boarded to Tham Kong Lo Cave turned into the 10am as we circled the town several times picking up passers by.

After another hour we arrived at the 7km caves, only to have to queue for another hour as all of the boats were already out – we’d probably turned up just behind a tour group or two.

When we finally got a boat we entered the pitch black caves, lit only by the light of our guides head torch. After 10 minutes we were dropped at the side to view some spectacular stalactites & stalagmites lit up by the side of the water. Back in the boat, the cave opened to almost 100m tall in places and just a wide in others.

Upon reaching the other end we had quick look around the village, (which was a couple of stalls) while waiting for our guide to eat his lunch.

Late back to town, we decided to get a lift to ‘the junction’ (a crossroads 15km out of town where busses passed on the main highway) in the hope of hailing a bus going south. Success - after ½ hour we boarded a bus to Pakse, but decided we’d stop in Savannakhet for the night as it was 11pm and if we’d continued on route we would have arrived in Pakse around 3am.

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[Mark]

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Guess you've discovered now in Laos they were a work of fiction!!