Our Big Explore: Tha Khek (The Loop) & Savannakhet

Wednesday 13^th Nov.

After a greasy breakfast experience, at “travel lodge” with eggs boiled in too much oil, we rented the motorbikes, and left together with dutch Marleen, and Maor & Bar from Israel. We counted the trip to take 4 days, if we wanted to explore everything on the way. The first stop, was at a small cave, a guy waved us in from the road, and was very happy to show us the cave. He didn’t speak a word of english, but told a lot of stories in Lao, and according to his body movements, it was about the cave. We couldn’t help smiling at him, he led us over big rocks, underneath small openings, and trough water in darkness. A very interesting trip through the cave, and stupid as we are, we forgot our headlamps (how can that even happen, when we know we were gonna see a lot of caves the next 3 days!! Still wondering), but luckily the other 3 brought theirs, so we could orientate in the dark and spooky cave. Erik lost his sunglasses in the water, but he needed some new ones anyway. Getting out in day light again, was a bright experience, and then our private guide pulled out a little Lao-English translations book, I looked him over his shoulder, and could tell that he was practicing to say fifty, in english (his price for showing us around, but off cause he’s counting on us to bargain him down, so he starts higher, than his actual price). I wonder why he didn’t use the book, to tell some of the many stories in english, instead of Lao, but he was a business man, he just wanted our money. Not shocking though. Me, Erik and Marleen agreed on paying 7 each, but apparently Bar & Maor wanted to pay him full price, so this guy who is most likely, use to get half of the price he says (that’s how it is on all markets), got a lot of money from us. After a hot and humid trip in the cave, we drove to a river nearby and had a swim. The first couple of hours we drove along, a lot of limestone mountains, and it may sound spoiled when I say, it was slightly disappointing, because we saw that already a lot of times now. Out of nowhere the scenery changed completely, into something that took both me & Erik’s breath away. It was like a fairytale dinosaur land, it looked so unreal. This were all we saw for a long time, and we were simply amazed. I remember I was thinking, that I didn’t care if the rest of the trip was good or not, but this view was absolutely worth the effort. Unfortunately hard to take pictures of, it’s a place you’ll have to discover for yourselves. We got to Tha Lang village, which was barely a village, but had two guesthouses, and was our first sleep over. The manager of Sabaidee Guesthouse, welcomed us with open arms and a big smile, he was the sweetest and most friendly person you can imagine. We got a nice bungalow with hammock on the porch, and finally it was time for the long waited beer, that we all talked about for hours. We had a cosy, fantastic night on the porch of the restaurant, with river and sunset view. Oooh sweet life!

Crawling out of the spooky cave

Happy face

Enjoying and swimming in the river

Colourfull dragonfly

Dinosaur land

Chilling with cold beers

My motorbike lesson

Thursday 14^th Nov.

This day was nothing as expected, we should drive 62km. and were told that the road was in very bad conditions for 40km. Unfortunately we should be happy, that we didn’t went during the rain season. That was as true as it gets, roads were really bad, mainly dirt roads with big holes, mud and big rocks. It was like driving in a huge construction area, and apparently we can thank the U.S. army for the impassable terrain. Well we took it as the experience it was, and we were happy to see the countryside of Lao. Almost 3 hours on the bad roads, made us really thirsty, so when we found a place to stay for the night, in Kuon Kham, we ordered 5 big beers. Well deserved! The same afternoon we sadly realized that our laptop was broken, we tried several times to restart it, but it couldn’t start up windows at all. We borrowed the guesthouse computer to research on the problem on the internet, but nothing worked. We were guttered, because we lost some pictures, and a lot of blog writing, and at the same time mad at ourselves to bring the laptop (most of our other stuff was in a storage room back in Tha Khaek). But on the other hand, we wouldn’t leave our laptop in the storage room. We tried not to think about it, when we went out for dinner with the others at night, but it was really sad that we also lost all our communication with friends and family. Now we would have to use the netcafe’s and pay for that everytime. Really feeling sorry for ourselves!!

Ready for another day on the roads

Local gas station

Lunch break in the middle of beautilful Lao

Not every one is having clean showers

Friday 15^th Nov.

Third day on the motorbikes and our butts was really starting to hurt. It hurt to sit on the bike, and hurt even more when we needed to get off it again. It was a bit more windy than the other days, which meant that we couldn’t drive that fast. We still got to the big Konglor cave in good time. We should discover the cave by long boats. It’s a 7,5 km dark tunnel cave, that’s running beneath an huge limestone mountain. Watching the daylight of the caves mouth disappear, was a spooky and uncomfortable experience. The only light was from our guides, and our rented headlamps. Some places the cave was more than 100 m. high, which make the feeling less claustrophopic. Walking through the dark water, when the boat was going upstream, was creepy and frightening, because we knew that snakes was a common sight in there (we already saw 2 before entering the cave). A creepy and spooky experience, and unlike any other caves we have seen. We survived the 2½ hour boat ride, and was happy to see sunlight again.

Bar & Maor wanted to do a homestay in the cave village, while we and Marleen, wanted to move on, so we didn’t have to drive over 200km the last day. After enjoying lunch with Bar & Maor we drove another 80km, to the next little village. Our butts were killing us at this point, and luckily the road was really good and easy to drive, so it only took a few hours, but sadly after 1 hour ride we saw that one of Erik’s shoes were missing from the back of his backpack. At night we shared some beers, while talking about how happy we were that we did this trip, even though Erik lost his sunglasses, one shoe and our laptop broke down, it had still been such a great tour around the country of Laos.

On the road

The mouth of the cave

Nice view from outside Konglor cave

Funny translations

Another gas station

Saturday 16^th Nov.

We drove towards Tha Khek , 105km in total. It slowly began to rain before we entered the town, and I ended up freezing, before we got back to Travel Lodge, where our big bag packs were storages, and the motorbikes brought back. We tried to get a little discount on the price on the motorbike, because the speedometer didn’t work properly and nor did the trip counter. The motorbike guy, Mr. Ku, was not in a negotiation-mood, even though we tried hard to get some money back. Ohh well, it was quite cheap anyway (400.000 kip = 280 kr for 4 days). It was so nice to finally get some clean clothes on, we wore the same clothes for 4 days now, so that had become really dirty and smelly. We left for Savannakhet in the afternoon, and were a bit surprised that the bus ride was quicker than we got told, only 2h 20min. Marleen recommended us a place to stay, and after me being tired of walking around, and Erik trying to be patient with me, we eventually found the right place. I was literally disgusted by the place, it looked like a little zoo were living there, with mouse poops in the corners, a huge amount of spiders and mosquitos hiding in the dark seiling, in general very dirty.

I tried not to complain too much, usually I choose where we stay because I’m far more piggy than Erik, but he felt the same about this place. After our bad luck with the laptop and the room, we decided to spoil us self in the evening, so we went out for steak, pizza and red wine (even a good one from Chile). For the first time in Asia we felt like we were in Europe, the waiters were well educated, aware of the costumers, and we even got our food at the same time (that’s very unusually around here). Needless to say, but the owner was French – so that’s probably why!

The Loop video

Looking forward to another busride

Sunday 17^th Nov.

As written earlier (in the last blog post) we got our laptop fixed. Our friendly computer guy, showed us another place to stay, for the second night, so we actually got a clean room, but only with cold water. Hot water is a common thing that you pay a little extra for here (as well as aircondition), but it’s really not nessesary, because we are so hot all the time. It definately dosen’t remind us of european winter that’s for sure.

Lake restaurant

Lotus flower

Enjoying lunch with our laptop saver and his family

Monday 18^th Nov.

Erik was dying to see the dinosaur museum, so we got up early, packed our stuff together and made it to the “museum” at 8am, to call it a museum is a exaggeration, it was just two small rooms with a few glass cabinets, with bones from the dinosaurs, all signs were written in French and Lao, so we had no clue of what we were looking at, some were copies, some were not. It was disappointing, and a waste of time and money. Quickly after we found a tuk-tuk and went to the bus station, just in time to catch a bus to Pakse at 9am. There’s no VIP or minibuses running on this route, at this time of the day, so our only opportunity was a local bus. Yeah jumping up and down clapping our hands, another “pleasant” drive on monkey class!! It was a experience as all other local buses are (and no we don’t get use to it, but it’s getting better). Bus were loaded with sugar bags the whole way down the isle, we sat on the backseats which was the only place, where we could fit our legs and feet, every other seat had a sugar bag underneath it, that made no room for legs and feet. People were squeezing in everywhere, and when we left the bus station I didn’t think that we would make it to Pakse. After a while the bus pulled over, and more people came in, and even more bags were loaded on the bus. Now there were people and sugar bags in every possible corner of the bus, some were sitting 3 people on 2 seats, kids was put in the isle, so they didn’t take up space on the seats, one guy carried a chicken around with him, another a bag 3 times bigger than herself. In Pakse we decided to go directly to the 4000 islands, in southern Laos. There was only one bus going in the direction, on this time of the day, and of cause a local one, where bags goes on the roof, and then there’s 2 benches in the back of the truck, where we sat together with local families and another guy with his chicken on his lap, petting it as it was some kind of dog. We got told that the reason why they treat them as pets, is that some use them for chick fights and earn money on it. So that makes more sense, why they are so generous to them. When we finally got to the pier, down by Don Det Island, after almost 4 hours “bus” ride, it had become dark. The village was tiny and empty, and we didn’t see any guesthouses, so we got concerned if there even was a boat sailing at this time, and if we would have a place to stay. The first couple of guys that we asked for a boat to Don Det just made fun of us, another guys answer was more promising, but then he left for 2 min, when he came back he told us he could sail us there for 50.000kip. We knew that usually it should cost 30.000kip, but considering the time, and that he was aware that we had no other opportunity, we didn’t even bother bargaining with him, but just agreed on the price, so we could get to our destination. His engine went off in the middle of the semi strong current in the Mekong river, it was both uncomfortable and amazing at the same time. We were surrounded by tiny islands, so either way we would float to one of those and get help if we needed it. It was so peaceful and absolutely silent, until he got his engine started again, and we made it safe to the island. Just as expected, we got met by a lot of round-eyed young people. With empty and starving stomachs we went to eat wiener schnitzel and enjoy one of the many beautiful riverside restaurants. Both looking forward to another 3-4 days of relaxation, that has become our favorite occupation.