Tha Kaek

Still with Tim, Nath, Francis and Brad, we took the bus to Tha Kaek and stayed the night in the seediest guesthouse to date.
We managed to arrange a 3 day, 450km motorbike tour the next day, with a boat trip through the 7km long Kong Lo cave as the main attraction. A Dutch girl called Juliette joined us at the last minute, and the 7 of us sped off on 4 scooters.

This trip turned out to be a stormer thanks to a variation of good and bad roads, gutsy little scooters, cheap repair shops, lot's of cathedral sized caves and running rivers to get stuck into, plenty of great views, meals and people and some time spent in rural Laos.

After a couple of hours the first obstacle was Juliette's bike leaking oil. We flagged down a few people and finally managed to make a phone call and have her bike replaced. Tim's bike had 3 punctures over the 3 days, one at 85kph, and he held the skid brilliantly! Kae burnt her leg badly on our exhaust, Nath rode his bike into a tree next to him from a standing start, with the damage to the stand being fixed Clarkson style with a hammer, I somehow got halfway through a doughnut when accidentally starting my bike in 1st gear, Neither Tim and Nath's bike or mine and Kae's bike had a working headlight or rearlight, and we all drove back for about over an hour in the dark on the last night, extremely carefully because of how many maniac farm animals wander about, and everyone apart from me and Kae ran out of petrol at least once.

These slightly dramatic moments transmogrified the trip, and made surviving the journey more rewarding. Other hightlights include the final day's mazy mountain road climb and decent, with perfectly smooth roads and ancient forest all around; the 62km off-road track on the second day, that took over 3 hours and was not suitable for scooters, but cut through more great rainforest; stopping whenever we liked for a drink or some food or a break, which was a great freedom after months of bus and train travel; meeting and greeting the locals, especially with Nath, the only person as enthusiastic as the Laos people; Kong Lo cave, which is 7km long, and at some points 100m wide and tall, with a lit up section that we explored on foot that looked like another planet, cheesy sci-fi scenery style; the thank-god-it's-all-over dinner and drinks.