Thakhek Loop - 4 Days On A Scooter

After leaving Don Det, one of the legendary 4000 islands, I spent the entire next day on the bus to Thakhek, a city in central Lao, right next to Thailand - the countries are just separated by the Mekong. The city itself is not special at all but it's still famous and every backpacker knows it. The reason for that is that Thakhek is the starting point of a 3-4 day loop leading through the area and along some caves, waterfalls, waterholes and lots of mountains. It's called the Thakhek loop. Most backpackers rent a scooter to do the loop, and so did I. So after spending the night at a hostel, I jumped on a scooter and went out of Thakhek pretty quickly.

Once I was surrounded by landscape instead of houses, the view was such a great one. There were mountains everywhere and I was riding through them all the time. Every now and then, I passed a small village with children and animals like goats or cows – and even a snake - crossing the street. The landscape didn't only consist of mountains though, I also saw some rivers and swamp areas. Oh, and I forgot to mention that the sun was shining and the sky was perfectly blue. I stopped at a nice waterfall for some photos and eventually finished the first stage of the loop in a town called Thalang after driving for some 90 kilometres. Just a few minutes later, a group of three from different European countries joined me at the hostel and we spent the evening together playing cards and enjoying some excellent fresh fish for dinner 🐟😋

After a good pancake for breakfast, I was ready for the second stage leading to the main attraction of the loop: a big cave called Kong Lor Cave. However, it was 157 kilometers away so there was quite a bit to drive. When I was resting and enjoying the view on top of a mountain after driving for around 90 minutes, Eemil from Finland passed by and we decided to drive to the cave together after having lunch in the nearby town. We reached the cave in the late afternoon, just in time to get one of the last guided tours. Just a few minutes later, we found ourselves in a small boat which took us into the cave which was certainly worth visiting. Very unexpected 😉 At first, we drove around in the dark a bit, and then we got out of the boat and walked around a bit. It was very impressive to see the huge dimensions of the cave and all the stalagmites and stalactites growing out of the bottom of hanging from the ceiling. After some minutes, our guide took us back out of the cave in his boat and we started trying to find a place to stay. My map showed there was a resort close to the river, so we went there. It had become dark in the meantime. When we saw the resort, we became a bit uncertain as it looked quite fancy and therefore potentially expensive, but we eventually went in there and managed to get a double room in a bungalow for quite a good price. We had dinner and spent the evening next to a nice bonfire, drinking some Beer Lao, one of the best Asian beers 🍻🔥

In the morning, we had breakfast on the balcony and had a great view of the Mekong right next to us. As we had already seen the major attraction of the scooter loop, the way back was mainly about getting back to Thakhek. Well, that's what we thought when we started in Kong Lor. But then, there was this crazy waterfall trail. In Na Hin, there was a sign leading to a waterfall. It said something about 6 kilometers and it was apparently accessible by scooter. The first few meters were okay indeed but then the first major obstacle turned up: a waterhole. We eventually made it through there even though I got stuck in the water and my engine died for a few seconds. And then, all of a sudden, there were some rocks ahead of us, big rocks. We didn't have another option, so we just got off the scooters and decided to walk the rest of the trail. But neither did that trail lead anywhere nor was it a real trail. It was much more about climbing over rocks and crawling through plants with thorns on them and spiders in them. I mean, I'm not afraid of them in general, and I didn't know if they were poisonous. Despite the difficulty of the trail, Eemil was very motivated to go on and I just followed him. And then, in the middle of some dense plants, I lost my phone! It had fallen out of my pocket 😨 Luckily I didn't realize that too late so we knew where it approximately had to be. I found it between two rocks. After walking for more than an hour without finding a proper waterfall, we had to go back as we obviously wanted to avoid being in the jungle in the dark. We drove a few more kilometers and decided to spend the night in Laksao. The town itself isn't that special but we had dinner at a very interesting place. It was apparently some kind of meeting point for the locals and they had some really strange dishes on the menu. There was a big screen in front of us and the other guests were either singing karaoke or listening to some Asian love songs. Very romantic 😜🎶 We stayed there for some time with some good beers and some good entertainment 😉

And then it was time to go back to Thakhek on day 4. 130 more kilometers on a road we already knew. Nothing could go wrong – false! A lot went wrong after driving for some 5 minutes. While driving into a corner I slipped on some loose stones, crashed into - or rather: slid along - the barrier and smashed one of my toes on a bollard. The pain was terrible during the first few minutes 😭 I was screaming out of pain. Luckily we weren't out of the city yet so we stopped at one of the numerous kiosks and I got some ice for my foot. Eemil organized some pain killers for me and after resting for a bit, I did feel much better. It was just funny to sit in the kiosk with like ten locals looking and pointing at you while talking in their language. I don't think it happens that often that they get to see such an incident 😅 As the scooter had luckily not been damaged - I think that was kind of a miracle 🍀 - and my pain had temporarily disappeared, I was able to go on driving. We stopped in Thalang for lunch and then arrived in Thakhek in the early evening. My toe didn't feel that bad anymore but instead, my left ankle really started hurting. The strange thing was that nothing had happened to it on that day. I had hit it against a stone during that crazy forest walk the previous day, but it had not hurt until that evening in Thakhek. As the pain got worse during the evening, I just stayed at the hostel, making as few movements as possible.

Of course, the pain was still there the next morning. It was so severe that I even shed tears. Luckily I still had some pain killers and luckily, I spent quite a lot of time on the bus so I didn't move that much. My next destination was Vang Vieng which is in the North and is often called the party capital of Lao. I got off the bus in Vientiane, the capital of Lao which I skipped, and was lucky enough to find a small bus taking me to Vang Vieng just around an hour later.

If you would like to know what happened during my time in the most vibrant place of Lao, check out my next blog post. It's going to be published soon 😊

Cheers,

Max