Thakhek Loop Pt. 2 — The road liss traveled

A lot of backpackers rush through the loop and only spend one night in Kong Lor just to do the cave, but I was definitely glad I stayed for two nights, and could have stayed longer. It really has that idyllic Laos countryside scenery. And being right on the river at the resort was great. It’s the same river that goes through the Kong Lor cave, so you can actually hire a boat from the resort to go straight to the cave if you want. Although it’s expensive with no one to split costs with. And I had my bike, so that was no go. Here’s some of the views from the river and the countryside nearby…

the spring water is very cold, creating the mist

The next morning it was off to the famous Kong Lor Cave. I begrudgingly paid almost double the normal price as solo person, road my scooter to the river parking area, got assigned my boat driver, off we went to our little wooden longtail boat. Only one group ahead of us. In dry season apparently you’re able to pay extra to have them precariously strap your bike to the boat and take it all the way through the cave, where you can keep riding on the other side. Although in rainy season they don’t let you do it because the roads on the other side are muddy and bad drivers (most drivers on the loop) can get themselves stuck or injured. Also this year one of the boats doing this capsized and the boatman died because he didn’t know how to swim (and wasn’t wearing a life vest). So it’s ethically dubious, but it’s kind of the wild wild west out here.

The longtail boat parking at the mouth of the cave

We’re off to a bad start on my boat. We approach a bunch of longtail boats parked at the mouth of the cave, and his is the one that is completely flooded with water. WTF. How does that even happen? So I sit there watching him throw buckets and buckets of water out of the boat before we can begin. The floor, where I want to put my backpack is still under an inch of water. Great. So we set off into the all encompassing darkness, my torch and his torch are the only sources of light we have. It’s a pretty trippy experience taking a boat through a pitch black cave with just two headlamps. Along the way there’s some small rocks and rapids to dodge, marked with little colorful buoys.

At one point you can see some lights in the distance, the largest chamber of the cave is illuminated, which is one of two stops where you stop and get out of the boat. Pretty impressive! But the real novelty is the ecosystem that it’s located in, attached to this underground river system. We made our other stop a few minutes up the river, nothing extraordinary as far as caves go, and then it was back on the boat for some relaxing river cave cruising to get to the exit.

Then THWACK! And crunching noises. We’re almost throw from the boat! We hit something. And the boat lurched off to the side. We’re sitting on something, a rock, kinda sideways. It took a second to figure out what happened. The boat is partially out of the water, tilted dangerously at 45 degree angle, resting on a submerged rock. WTF. So much for a relaxing river cruise. After the initial shock, my first reaction is relief, because we were soooo close to flipping, and if we did, there goes my phone, passport, camera, lenses, laptop. Everything. And who knows if this guy knows how to swim. Yikes

If you want to visualize it, here’s my best attempt. Our boat is stuck on a submerged two pronged rock (red dots) with one prong right below the surface and the other prong a bit deeper. This is not our cave of course, as ours doesn’t have any lights. It’s pitch black except for where we shine our headlamps.

Ok, so the boat is stable, we’re just stuck in the middle of the river in a pitch black cave with no one around. Could be worse! The boatman is very animated now, yelling and presumably swearing and saying all sorts of stuff I can’t understand. This isn’t just your average Tuesday I guess. He’s able to get out and stand on part of the rock that is only a few inches below the surface, and he we wants me to join him there. Ok, chill out buddy. I take all the stuff out of my pockets, take my camera, and stash it into my backpack. There’s not enough room for both of us on this little rocky perch. And this isn’t a smooth river stone, it’s sharp jaggedy limestone. It can easily cut your feet. The bottom of the boat is probably torn up pretty good from it.

I’m trying to stand there with him, but there’s no room and it’s painful. I point that I’m going in the water, which he is emphatically shaking his head no, but there’s literally nowhere for me to go. It’s fine, I can swim. I hop in, and tread water and shine my headlamp on the boat. He relaxes a bit. He is definitely more stressed out than I am, seeing how it’s his lack of attention that got his boat stuck on a rock and his client swimming, and his job is possibly on the line. Not a great look for the guy who drives boats for a living. You’d think these guys would know this river like the back of their hand, they drive it every day. Guess not. Anyway…

He starts shaking the boat as hard as he can. It’s not moving. I try and lift as well, but I’m pretty useless being in the water. He’s yelling and grunting, but it’s really wedged in there good. These wooden boats are heavy! And this limestone is very grippy. We’re getting nowhere. He starts making whistles for help, but c’mon bro, that’s not doing anything. So we end up just having to sit there and wait for someone to come by. I swim a bit and find a shallow sandy spot to stand. But I’m really not worried at all. I’m actually feeling kinda giddy, because if we had capsized, we would have been fucked. Really fucked. The boat driver more than me presumably. Forget the electronics, if we were in the water with both our lights out, complete darkness, that’s nightmare material. And if the boat driver doesn’t know how to swim, does he drown? Do I try to help him? Can I even do anything if I can’t see anything? Wild to think about. But now, the boat is intact, nobody is hurt, everything is fine!! This is the biggest tourist attraction in central Laos, who knows when the next boat is coming, but there’s going to be boats coming!

Maybe 10 minutes later we see the lights from a boat coming up the river the opposite way we came – which is odd because we were one of the first morning boats to depart. But yay! It’s a boat with 4 guys in some sort of khaki uniforms, maybe government workers of some kind. This is basically the best case scenario, a boat full of strapping young lads! They pulled up next to us and were able to rock and lift our boat enough to get it freed from it’s rocky holding cell. Mission accomplished! We thanked them and the one guy who spoke English said “Don’t worry, no problem” before they sped off into the darkness.

Time to fire up the motor and get moving! Revvv, revvvv, click. Click. Ughghhgh. Nothing. God damn it. More swear words from the captain. He’s whacking the motor like that crazy Russian cosmonaut with the crowbar at the end of Armageddon, “This is how we fix things in Russian Space Station!!” Except it didn’t magically work, he gave up and defeatedly took out his big wooden paddle and we drifted over to the nearby sandbar to park. He got out his toolkit and started working on the engine, clanging away, doing who knows what. It’s gonna be a really long day if we have to paddle out! At this point I’m really getting a good feel for what these cave walls look like in this section of Kong Lor.

After 10-15 minutes of engine stuff, revvvv, revvvvv, bbrrRRRRRR!! We’re back! Out to the other side, into the glowing daylight and eventually the village to have a little rest and dry off in the sun. The village is mostly stands to sell stuff to tourists, but whatever. My iced coffee tasted great. It’s really pretty on this side, I can see why people want to take their bikes through the cave and keep going in this direction. After 30 minutes break time was over and it was a rather uneventful ride back through the cave to the entrance. I thought about mentioning this mishap to the office, but decided against it, even if he was a shitty boatman, I didn’t really want to try and get him fired. So we parted ways like nothing had happened. No tip though. Definitely no tip for THAT. I did send the office an email a day later about the submerged rock, although I’m guessing the odds of that doing anything were approaching zero.

From here I had the option to take it slow, and spend a night somewhere else on the loop before driving back to Thakhek the next day, or just spend the rest of the day going straight there. I felt like I had enough excitement for the trip, so back to Thakhek it was. 60km in the countryside, and then the last 100km of the trip were all on the highway – the new, and not-potholed highway, which is a real treat when you’re in Laos, but not exactly very exciting to write about or to take photos. So that was about all for the Thakhek loop. I was back in my hotel bed by late afternoon. With time to spare to go find some sunset photos, yay. So overall, a pretty successful trip! No injuries, no illness, no bike damage, no extra incurred expenses, just one 45 minute river delay. And here’s some photos of my last evening in Thakhek, err just outside of Thakhek.