Simon's dispatch: Tha Khek loop
It's a very bumpy 6 hour bus ride from Vientiane down to Tha Khek, a fairly nondescript town on the Laos-Thai border. We went there to attempt one of our greatest adventures to date.. 'The Loop'.
The loop is a 405km circuit of mostly good roads, some gravel roads and best of all about 20km of proper dirt road. It takes you through some stunning limestone karst scenery before delivering you to one of the most impressive caves in the world - Konglor cave!
It's usually attempted in 3-4 days so we opted for the more leisurely 4 day option. From Mr Ku we got ourselves a pair of the finest Korean made mopeds not much money could hire and set off into the sunset with nothing but a daypack strapped to the back of my scooter*. (*some artistic license has been exercised in the writing of this blog. We finally rode off at 10:30 having aimed for 8:30 and we were also wearing clothes due to the Laos tradition of dressing modestly in public)
Day 1 took us 100km past a plethora of caves variously described as either "awesome" or "a complete waste of time" in the ever-so-handy log book the 'travel lodge guest house' keeps in it's unofficial capacity as HQ for 'the loop' attemptees.
Of them all we chose to visit Xieng Liab for it's good reviews & lack of entrance fee. Now this is where I learnt how important it is to pay attention to which season reviewers visited a site in. The description I'd remembered was "small children will materialise & show you the way to this awesome cave which has rocks you can boulder on". Instead we found a kid and his Dad charging 30,000kip (£2.30) to take us there by boat? After trying to politely work out if we could still walk there and being told adamantly "no, too wet" we stumped up most of the cash and hopped in the leaky longtail boat.
So it turns out that Laotian "too wet" roughly translates into "completely flooded" - to the extent he actually piloted us right through what is a very stunning, cathedral like cave and out the other side. Where-upon he and his son stripped off, to pants and less (so much for Laos modesty!) and went for a dip in the large pool spilling out of the cave.
The little kid was a mini Tarzan swinging through the branches and dropping into the murky water. Unfortunately despite his most endearing efforts I totally forgot to give him any of the kiddy presents of pencils & lollies we'd brought especially for the trip - just going to show that life's not fair & subconsciously I must like lollies more than cute kids?
After that we were a bit pressed for time but nature made it easy for us to skip the beautiful lake and touristy lit up cave. As the road to the beautiful lake was now a part of the lake and the bridge to the tourist cave had been overwhelmed and was now a ford that Beth quite rightfully refused to cross.
Instead we grabbed a quick lunch of Laos Laos soup at a very local roadside eatery/market. Having been told that Laotians have no concept of vegetarianism Beth was initially relieved when the proprietor appeared to understand the crib sheet Mr Ku had given us that contained the magic words "I do not eat meat". Unfortunately this resulted in me not getting any pork and Beth still finding what appeared to be chicken kidney/liver in the broth. As only one of these could be easily corrected by the addition of a plate of meat - a stuffed Simon & a hungry Bethan pushed on towards our first guesthouse.
Allegedly the first day was supposed to be sealed roads degenerating to gravel road near the end. However, thanks to a combination of friendly local directions & google maps, we managed to find what I assume was a shortcut that was so treacherous it would be suitable for the Olympic mountain biking event! Beth did fantastically well having less mountain biking experience than me and neither of us took a tumble despite ankle deep slippery mud, huge ruts and a couple of steep slopes.
Day 2: After a reasonably restful nights sleep it was time to tackle what one looper had christened "hell highway", where many a looper had "crashed" often multiple times. We'd received some useful beta from three loopers we'd met the previous evening who were going in the opposite direction to us. They spoke of a puddle so large you couldn't go around it but so deep it flooded their bike engine and those of some locals who'd also attempted it! However, they had seen some others make it through by sticking to the left side which, although the widest side, was also the shallowest (just 20cm deep).
It was with a fair amount of trepidation we fired up our mighty steeds and headed onto the open but basically non-existent road. What followed was for both of us a highlight of our time in Laos. Challenging dirt biking but not as bad as the shortcut we'd taken the previous day, with the occasional 'model healthy village' (read: replacement village for those dispossessed by the creation of a large lake for the 'community hydro power project') with friendly children waving and yelling "sabaidee!" (hello).
I quickly learnt to wave back with my left hand as the accelerator is controlled with the right and the effect of engine breaking in 2nd gear, in thick mud is very similar to pulling the front break... hard! I didn't want to entertain the kids THAT much!
I started filming parts of the journey under the pretence of wanting to create a mini homage to 'A long way down' but in reality I just thought it gave me the best chance of filming Beth fall off. She didn't disappoint but unlike a good documentary maker, I definitely affected my subject. As it was only because I yelled "stop I'll film this bit" on a particularly scwiffy bit of mud, ruts and puddles that she over-applied the front break and had to ditch the bike as the front wheel slid out. Annoyingly I only captured the end of the graceful dismount but luckily Beth and bike were fine as she was doing less than 5mph and the mud was good & soft (she didn't even put a hand down).
Unperturbed, a little while later, she then cruised through the massive puddle as though it was nothing, completely ruining the last chance of a good carnage shot (well, foot down in a big muddy puddle anyway).
It turned out to be a rather long day as the previous evenings loopers had convinced us to just push on through to Konglor and do the whole thing in 3 days instead of 4 "because the hard bit only takes 2.5 hours". However, they hadn't taken extra time b*****ing about with filming. So after completing the "hell highway" & having a late lunch, it was 15:30 & we still had another 98km to do!
Luckily reasonably good roads and Michael Jackson's 'speed demon' playing on my internal jukebox meant we got there before darkness fell, albeit at the sacrifice of some nice sunset photos. While Beth's encouraging us to go at a sensible speed ensured we got there in one piece despite a kamikaze chicken's best attempt to unseat her by charging across the road, forcing her to perform a skid that apparently even impressed the locals.
Konglor is down a mostly straight 40km valley, with massive limestone peaks lining both sides that look perfect for climbing. Ludicrously green rice paddy fields fill the wide flat base of the valley, suddenly terminating at the edges in vertical grey cliffs lending it a fairytale charm.
Day 3: Early in the morning we headed to Konglor cave. It made Xieng Liab cave seem like a small scale model. After walking into the mouth of the cave to avoid the rapids that guarded the caves secrets until 1996, we boarded a longtail boat, turned our torches on & began the great underground journey.
The cave is 7.5km of gently flowing river running right through a limestone mountain. There is no illumination except your torches. You just glide noisily around unseen bends, dodging cascades of drips that are building new stalactites and wonder at the huge scale of the place!
At one point they bump the boat up against a sandbank and tell you to get out. As you do they flick a switch and all of a sudden this massive chamber is lit up by a multitude of coloured lights, stretching further than you can see round the corner. Let's just suffice to say that Wookie Hole is going to be a bit of a disappointment from now on!
After a little walk it's back to the boat for more dark cruising (no red light district jokes please) before you finally see the light appearing in front of you. It's really quite impressive after being in the dark for so long, to suddenly emerge into this Jurassic park like valley. If I were them I'd rig speakers & blast out the theme tune as people emerged - it'd be epic!
You don't get to spend long in the secret valley, just a toilet & drinks stop really, but it is an awesome place. There are 3 villages in there who have to get all their supplies shipped in through the cave!
Re-entering the cave for the return journey is actually the best bit because your boat just ploughs straight towards these unbroken 500m high cliffs then, just behind a river bend and a tree, you slip back into the secret tunnel. Really amazing geography!
After our brief stint as fraggles was over all we had to do was get back to Tha Khek before sundown. This should have been reasonably easy as the roads are all good and at the longest it should have taken 6 hours. However, lady luck and something sharp had other ideas and gave my rear wheel a puncture 40km from Tha Khek.
A sweaty 2km jog with the bike back to the nearest village and a little help from a friendly local to find the scooter repair shop (it was masquerading as someone's garage/kitchen/bedroom) and for the princely sum of £1.80 the inner tube was replaced and we were back on the road in the nick of time.
Casting long shadows we finally motored into Tha Khek at 18:30, half-an-hour before Mr Ku closed. Luckily we only had to perform our John Wayne waddle for the 10m to our hotel before celebrating with a beer laos - mission accomplished!