After our last night in Vientiane, we got up, packed up our bags and left the guest house for the travel agent at the end of the road. After picking up some sausauge skewer things from a street cart for breakfast, we were soon loaded onto a tuk tuk and taken to the bus station some 8km from the city centre.

After being dropped off, we were shown to our 'VIP' bus which was a big double decker coach which at some point may have been VIP but was now filthy and worn around the edges.

It wasn't long until we set off, on a rather eventful bus journey, leaving the city and heading through the countryside. Instead of using the air conditioning, the guys on the bus just left the side door wide open, probably partly because they stopped every 30 seconds to let people on and off the coach, including woman trying to hawk all sorts of cooked creatures on sticks and fruit in bags.

The effect of this novel air conditioning system was that we, sat at the top of the stairs on the bus, were at the end of a wind tunnel blasting filth from the side of the road directly into our faces. To make matters more interesting, shortly into the journey a chap two seats in front suddenly shot out of his seat and made for the stairs, but didn't get there before erupting a torrent of vomit all over the floor of the bus. The aforementioned wind tunnel effect resulted in spatters of his expulsion peppering my lower legs, which almost induced the beginning of a catastrophic vomit-chain throughout the bus. Luckily, I managed to keep my insides under control, and merely had to sit for most of the journey watching his vomit slowly dry and crust onto the floor of the bus. VIP indeed.

Despite these tribulations, the journey wasn't too bad. Eventually our weak-stomached friend left the bus meaning we could get a seat downwind of the puke, and we spent the rest of the journey in relative comfort as we made our way through the countryside through beautiful rice paddies, then onto the infamous Route 8 winding along narrow switchbacks up through steep hills of dense jungle, across wooden 1-lane bridges, before descending on the other side to a relatively flat stretch of road.

From here we drove through an incredible landscape of flat-bottomed valleys of rice paddies, ringed by towering limestone cliffs, with the occasional limestone karst jutting from the vibrant green fields.

Eventually we turned off Route 8 onto the road to Kong Lor village, where the scenery went into overdrive. We drove through the most beautiful valley yet, with clouds clinging to the tops of the cliffs on either side, and the whole lot reflected in the perfectly still water in between the bright green shoots of the rice paddies.

Some six hours after setting off from Vientiane we arrived in Kong Lor village. The bus passed through the tiny one-street town then doubled back, dropping us outside one of the few guest houses. We opted to walk back down the road a way, to a place we had passed on the way in.

We had expected only a very basic village, where we thought we would be in a homestay in a bamboo hut. However, the guest house we found was new, clean and great value. The owner wasn't there, and the place was being run by three young girls who didn't speak any English, and spent all their time watching some kind of reality talent show on TV. However, they were efficient in showing us to our room which, whilst basic, was spotless and had everything we needed.

We relaxed in the room for a few hours before heading downstairs to get some food, managing to avoid having our ankles bitten by the dogs living in the guest house who looked like Lucy's dog Fern and her possible blond sister. We ordered from the small menu and listened as the girls prepared our food with much hilarity in the kitchen. However, they were evidently trained well and we were treated to a tasty meal of fried rice and fried noodles. I'm sure they weren't too happy about us interrupting Lao's Got Talent however.

After dinner there was nothing else to do since it was dark, so we went back up to the room, read and relaxed. The air was lovely and cool since we were up in the hills, and we could hear only the peaceful sounds of the night insects outside in the fields as we lay there. Eventually we drifted off for a long, relaxing sleep accompanied by the atmospheric sound of heavy rain through the night.

After a longish lie, we got up, had a shower then went downstairs to interrupt the seemingly neverending talent show marathon to get some breakfast. We tried to ask the girls in the guest house about getting to Kong Lor cave, the whole reason for our visit to the village, but with their lack of English it proved difficult.

Deciding to take our chances, we grabbed some stuff from the room and set off up the only street in town, assuming that eventually it would lead us to the cave. The town was so quiet and peaceful, with most people dotted about busy in the rice paddies throughout the wide valley, and only the odd person here and there or kids playing in the street, along with ducks and water buffalo along the side of the road.

We were once again stunned by the beauty of the valley surrounding us as we walked through the town. Clouds clung along the tops of the cliffs all around and the whole scene burst with living colour after the rainfall of the night before.

After walking the length of town and a little bit further, we came across a manned barrier which appeared to be the entrance to get to the cave. We paid a nominal fee to enter, then continued along a dirt road through some trees for a short distance until we heard the sound of water, then found ourselves beside a river, swollen and brown, with a hut beside it full of men, apparently the boatmen who would be able to take us through the cave.

After sussing out the situation, we paid the guy in charge in the hut, were issued with lifejackets, then followed our boatman to the river bank. Here, we got our first glimpse of Kong Lor cave, a gaping mouth at the base of a towering limestone cliff, spewing forth the brown torrent of the river. It was an awesome sight, especially when we realised we would shortly be sailing into that dark maw.

The first stage of the journey was to get across the river, which we did by carefully climbing into a longtail boat and keeping our balance as our guide paddled us to the opposite bank. From here we had to walk up and across some rocks, to bypass a churning area of rapids just in front of the cave mouth, then into the wide mouth of the cave itself.

Upstream of the rapids, we found the water far more placid, and inside the mouth of the cave there were numerous longtail boats moored and in various stages of arrival and departure. Behind them was only the utter darkness of the cave, which stretched for nearly 8km through the mountain.

As we waited for our guide to set up our boat by attaching its outboard motor with its long propeller-shaft-cum-rudder, we watched some other people getting off a boat, having just come through the cave from the far side. Excited by their positive comments about the cave, we watched some locals on the opposite side of the river carrying a trussed pig hung from a bamboo pole out of their own longtail boat, before ours was ready to go.

We made our way down and into the long, narrow and shallow boat, put on the head torch and got ready to set off. Our guide wasted no time, and the engine soon burst into life and began propelling us away from the cave mouth into darkness. An incredible sense of anticipation came over us as we puttered upstream into the black of the cave, not knowing what was ahead and excited to find out. Soon our guides had to turn on their head torches to light the way, and we looked around in awe at the cave walls curving above us.

The journey through the cave was spectacular, as we listened to the reverberations of the boats engine sound change with the changing geography in the cave. By the guides' light and our own, we were able to see the cave walls around us as we moved from low areas where the ceiling was only 6 or so feet above us, to cathedral like caverns hundreds of feet tall and wide.

Partway through the cave, we pulled into a sandy beach where our guide hopped out before turning on some lights, illuminating a path up through the cave. we followed along a path, winding between some fantastic cave formations lit in sympathetic coloured lights which showed off the fantastical shapes of the rocks.

After following the path we descended some steps to another beach where we re-boarded our boat, before the guides shut off the lights and we were returned to natural cave darkness, again only lit by our head torches.

We carried on through the epic cave before, some 40 minutes after setting off, we saw the literal light at the end of the tunnel. Passing through the toothy mouth of the upstream entrance of the cave, we were plunged into a world of colour and light, the sunshine seeming brighter and the jungle greener after the darkness and muted browns and greys of the cave.

We continued upstream a short distance further, through dense jungle with steep hills all around and buffalo grazing on the banks, before stopping near some huts by the riverbank.

We got ashore here and had a drink and snack from our bags while our guides had a rest and a chat with another local manning a bamboo-built snack outpost, before getting back into the boat for the return journey.

The approach to the cave on the way back was even more impressive than on the way up, as we got to sail down the river, around a bend before being faced with the sheer wall of rock punctured by the rent of the cave mouth, and sailed uninterrupted into it. Once into the darkness, the journey back was equally as exciting as the way up, though this time we cruised directly through the cave, without stopping to walk.

In time we saw the wide downstream mouth of the cave, and soon moored in the cave mouth before retracing our steps over the rocks and back across the river. We wandered back to the guest house through the still-quiet village, passing women fishing for small fish in the rice paddies, using square nets on long sticks and ducks swimming in huge puddles left by the heavy rain.

Apart from some day-trippers we had seen visiting the cave, we were the only westerners in the village, which made such a refreshing change to the last few weeks where we had been just two faces amongst many following the same route and visiting the same places.

Once back to the guesthouse we showered and relaxed for a bit, writing some more blog updates. We went down for another tasty dinner, again interrupting the girls from their constant TV viewing. Whilst eating dinner, a Dutch couple appeared in the guest house and we couldn't help but feel a little put out at having to share the place with other people, having had the whole town to ourselves since the day before.

After our early dinner, with nothing else we wanted to do and with darkness already in place, we retired to our room to read and relax before getting an early night.