Easy Riding in Laos - 4 days through the Khammuan Province

In our travels to date we are discovering that to really see things off the beaten path you have to have wheels. Buses will get you between towns and cities but to see the villages and the backcountry you need another form of transportation. In Iceland and Europe that meant renting a car. In SE Asia that means either signing up with a tour which is expensive and lumps you together with a dozen other falang (Westerners) or if you want to do it yourself then renting a motorcycle. This is what we decided to do to explore the central high plateau of Bolikhamsai and Khammuan Province in Laos. This is a very rural area so that helped take away some of the traffic menace. Riding motorcycles in Laos is not entirely without risk (see later in this blog) especially since the medical care in most of the country is minimal to non-existent. Most of the hospitals/clinics have minimal supplies and many don't even have electricity. If something happens you really have to get to Thailand for any real care. However, we decided that in order to actually see the countryside the risk was worth it and we went off on a 4 day ride of the mountains. This area was near the Ho Chi Minh Trail during the Vietnam War and was heavily bombed so we were interested in seeing if there was any signs of that (see previous blog "American Legacy in Laos").

Wishing this sign had an American flag on it

Day 1: We rented a motorcycle from Mr Ku in Tha Khaek. He was not the cheapest guy renting bikes in town but he promised to pay for any repairs along the way and that alone was worth the extra couple of dollars a day he charged ($12/day total). Mr Wang Wang was the cheapest in town but the reviews we got about his bikes were not good. Kathleen had never driven a motorcycle and it had been 20+ years since I owned one so that made me the "qualified" one. Kathleen elected to trust her life with me and hold on as I drove. 

125cc's of get up and go

 

The first day was the "small" cave day. As soon as you left Tha Khaek and the Mekong River valley there started to be steep limestone mountains and karsts (steep towers). Rock climbing is the other popular activity in this area. We stopped at 3 different caves. The Buddha Cave is a holy site that has a multitude of Buddha sculptures in it from an unknown source that have been there and not touched for over 600 years. Like many of the caves in the area it had a river running out of it. 

River coming out of Buddha cave (no pictures allowed inside due to it being a holy spot)

The next cave was the best. Xieng Liab (Elephant Cave - because of a stalactite formation looking like an elephant head) was completely undeveloped and the biggest cave of the day. As we parked the bike 2 small children - Da (age ~7 ) and Tha Hamle (age ~5) appeared out of nowhere and mentioned that they wanted to show us the way which is good because we were not sure where the cave was and it turned out to be down a little path through the jungle. Soon we were there and they showed us the route through the cave.

Being led by toddlers

They kept running ahead and hiding in little holes and cracks to try and scare us. At the far end of the cave we could have reached the other side but it involved swimming the river so we did an out and back through the cave. At one point we skipped rocks into the river. They would count the skips in English and I would count them in Lao. 

Skipping rocks with Da

We gave them 5000 kip each for their guide services (the Buddha Cave had cost 2000 kip for entry - 25 cents). The last cave (Tham Sa Pha In) was the most touristy with walkways and lots of Thai tourists. At 1pm we had been warned to be on the road to get to our guest house in Tha Lang before dark. Driving a motorcycle at night was not a risk we wanted to take. The road soon went up a steep long hillside until we were on the upper plateau. It was there that we passed the Nam Theum 2 dam which is the largest hydroelectric project in Lao to date. Like all dams it has produced a large amount of controversy. Many people had to be relocated due to the huge reservoir created and are now in "Model Healthy Villages" according to the signs in front of them that line this stretch of road. It does however provide power, water, and revenue to a country that is far poorer than the nations surrounding it and has helped relieve some of the poverty in the area. It was on this stretch of road that we met Frank, a Swiss guy who was having trouble with his motorbike. We were going to tag along with him to make sure he was ok but we stopped to take pictures and he disappeared ahead of us. Turns out we passed him in a small town where he had the bike repaired. He stayed at the Sabaidee Guesthouse like us that night but did not arrive until after dark. It was there that he informed us that he had just been the second person on scene to a head on motorcycle to motorcycle accident. One person was obviously dead with a broken neck and the other one was questionable. It was a poignant reminder that we needed to be super careful with what we were doing.

Day 2: Every Lao we had talked to had pointed to the map of the section we were going to cover and said "Bad road! Bad road!". I had also heard numerous stories about people crashing or dropping their bikes in this section. The plan initially was for the people we had met at the guesthouse that night, Nikki (Canadian), Amy (Kiwi), and Frank, to go with us as a group through this section. We all mounted up and started off but within 30 yards I realized that our back tire was flat. They continued on while Kathleen and I went back to the Guesthouse. We pumped the tire up with a bike pump which was good enough to get the bike back to the last village where there was a mechanic. The garage was basically a wood hut and I did not realize it was the garage until I asked the people standing in front of it where I could get a tire fixed (this was done through sign language and the word "baw dee" (no good). The mechanic turned out to be crippled with no use of his legs. It appeared to me to be from polio more then an accident. He crawled around on his hands and knees to get around. What was cool was that despite being severely handicapped he was definitely the boss there. He had several guys working for him and seemed to be the most knowledgeable about fixing motorcycles. They changed the inner tube while various villagers came by, chatted, brought a load of fish, and asked about their own motorcycle problems. 

Fixing the flat                 

The catch of the morning

I always wonder what is being said as the villagers were obviously talking about me and laughing but it was a very friendly vibe I got from everyone. After the tire was reinflated I took off but only made it about 100 meters before PSSSSSSST, it was entirely flat again. I showed back up at the garage after about 3 minutes and shook my head. "Baw dee, Baw dee". This time they replaced both the tire and the inner tube but they only had a front tire and it was the rear one that was flat. At a fundamental level though a tire is a tire and this time the repair worked. I went back to the Guesthouse, picked up Kathleen, and we headed onto the bad road. This was one of those roads that was bad and just when you thought that it was as bad as it was going to get, it would deteriorate another level. 

Sometimes it was hard to know what to do

I can see why people would crash going through it, especially if the dirt was wet making it muddy. We are traveling during the dry season so dust and loose gravel were the main obstacles. We passed miles and miles of the reservoir formed by the Nam Theum 2 dam with lots of dead trees sticking up out of the water. 

Nam Theum 2 Reservoir

Eventually the road passed down from the upper plateau and entered back into the limestone mountain and cliff terrain. We had such a late start that we ended up stopping at the first town we came to big enough to have a hotel. This town was Lak Sao which is located near the Vietnamese border and has a fair amount of logging going on in the area. This town does not see many falang. We saw no other Westerners while we were there. It turned out this was New Years Eve. When we got there the partying had already started. I was suffering from a cold so I took a nap when we got to town but Kathleen went and wandered the market. This market was the real deal. No cleaning things up for the tourists. Piles of guts and organs, every kind of body part of the animals (chicken feet were the least of it), live chickens in baskets, fish alive in buckets and on ice, rats, weasels, dead parrots, and even bats were on sale. Half the population in Laos is "food insecure" so people eat what they have to. There were Lao women drinking and dancing in the market. Another loud party was going on behind our hotel with lots of hooting, hollering, and staggering around. As the afternoon went on into evening it got even crazier. Fireworks, more dancing, shouting, singing, and within 10 minutes of leaving our hotel to find some dinner we saw three different people crash their motorcycles - all slow speed but they all seem to be alcohol related. We went to a hole in the wall bar where it was obvious Westerners didn't go. Mice scurried across the floor at one point. The men there asked us in broken English where we were from and kept raising their glasses to us and wishing us "Happy New Year". Definitely one of the coolest and most unusual New Year celebrations I have ever been at. When we got back to our hotel that night we were amused to see that even though everyone takes their shoes off before going inside they had parked all the guests motorcycles inside in the lobby.

Day 3 - The morning was foggy as we left Lak Sao which just showed the tops of the mountains poking out of the top of it. It was also very cold since we left early in the morning to try to make up for lost time the day before. Kids were going off to school and people were starting their days. There were many small campfires in the towns with people gathered around them for warmth. The farmers here work from sunrise to sunset and were already in the fields. Within a couple of hours the fog had burned off and the sun had things warmer. We were back on pavement so the kilometers ticked off faster than the day before. On this day we were headed for Kong Lor Cave which was the main goal of the whole trip. As we got closer after 5 hours the steep limestone mountains that lined the valley closed into where Kong Lor Village was. 

Kong Lor Valley

The valley was mostly rice fields with some other crops interspersed. The villages we passed were very poor. Laos has a little over 6.5 million people in a country twice the size of Pennsylvania. 44% of those people live on ~$1.25/day. 70% of the population are subsistence farmers. 

Working in the fields

As we passed through these small villages people would wave, children would run along smiling and shouting "Sabaidee" (Hello) and "How are you". It was one of those days and moments when both Kathleen and I thought separately "If I could be anywhere in the world doing anything I want to be right here!" 

Loving life on the road

Then we got to the cave and it got even better. This cave has been known about since the 16th century but it was not fully explored until the 90s and a motorized boat had not gone through until 2002. It is basically a 7km (almost 4 mile) underground river (the Nam Hin Boun River) that goes through the middle of a mountain. 

Entering the Kong Lor Cave

This cave is big. Almost big enough to fly a plane or at least an ultralight through except for a few spots where it narrows down. There are a couple of spots where the river gets narrow and there are small cataracts where we had to get out so the boatmen (a guy in front with an oar and a guy in back who ran the motor) could push the boat through shallow area.

Getting boat through small rapids

There was one part where we stopped and walked through a section where there were a large amount of stalactites and stalagmites for about 200 meters. On the other side of the cave there is a small village after traveling up the river another mile or so where we stopped and had lunch and a beer. There is a way to 4 wheel drive to this village but there was a truck stuck in the river ford so that afternoon the way in/out of town was blocked. 

Can't get there from here

The trip back through didn't take quite as long as it was downstream. We spent that night in Kong Lor Village. It is also a poor farming village but has the good fortune from its location that it is able to supplement its income from the tourists coming to the cave. The back porch of our Guesthouse room overlooked rice paddies with cows grazing nearby and chickens pecking around for food. 

View from the porch

The only down side to the whole day was that my cold was worse to the point that I thought I was dehydrating through my nose.

Day 4 - I woke up with my cold much better. I could actually smell things again. This was the highest mileage day but most of it was highway so we were able to go much faster. It was another gorgeous morning with mist over the mountains and at one point the clouds were flowing over the ridgeline like water in a wave. It would have made a really cool looking time lapse movie. The first part of the drive went over two mountain passes with extensive views of the sharp limestone ridgelines that extended out in layers toward the horizon. The landscape reminded me of the Needles in South Dakota some. Lots of rock climbing potential in this area. 

Limestone ridgelines

At the last gas station we stopped and the electric starter on the motorcycle stopped working but I was able to kick start it with no problem. Once on the main highway it became much more boring. It is mostly flat plain that runs along the Mekong River and we had seen this when we took the bus from Vientiane to Tha Khaek. We went as fast as the bike would go for this section though still being very careful of the trucks, cars, motorcycles, cows, goats, chickens, dogs, and children that like to periodically get in the way. We got the bike back to Mr Ku with no further problems and he paid me back the 120,000 kip ($15) we had spent to get the tire fixed at the mechanics.

Phonsavan and the Plain of Jars, Luang Prabang, and the Nam Ha National Protected Area are next on the agenda.