A couple of ‘Loops’ in Laos

We crept over the border from Cambodia. We were looking for something. Not cities or nightlife. We had seen a lot of Temples over the last two months. Looking for insight. For an idea. A feeling. For an indication of how things might have been in Vietnam fifty years ago. We had spent most of January wondering what life had been like in Vietnam before reunification. We had wondered about Cambodia before the arrival of the Chinese. It seemed a good idea to go and visit rural Laos and see if we could get a glimpse of the life of the rural Laos. The way people used to live and continue to live.

Big change is coming to this country. We wanted to capture it, in our hearts, Already there are big plans for the area called ‘4,000 islands’. There’s an adventure park coming. Meanwhile roads have been built in the past five years and raw materials are now heading out of the country.

So we stayed North of this – and headed for Pakse. Pakse is the start of the Bloaven Plateau a motorcycle loop. We spent one night in town, left our luggage with our hotel and hired a scooter. You have to hand in your Passport in Laos. There are no exceptions. Read your hire agreement, make sure you know what you are signing up for.

The scenery is pleasant. Some of it is really pretty. We were here in dry season, and there was ‘burning season’ taking place in some areas of the mountains which gave added depth to the ‘haze’ which was creating a less than ‘crisp’ view. I guess we ruined ourselves by starting this journey with the Hui Gian loop in Vietnam, but this loop seems mundane at best.

It was Cassava harvest season, miles after miles of local subsistence farmers drying their presliced harvest on plastic in their grounds. Shoes off, wandering up and down the bounty turning the harvest in the sunlight.
Cassava is a huge crop in Laos, and the aroma of the tuber is heavy in the air – an overtone of flatpack furniture. Cassava smells like woodchip.

Wide straight highways running through village after village with very little to pique your interest. There are several waterfalls. In many sites there is evidence of previous enthusiasm for the march of tourism. It’s not clear if it was Covid which did it, but there is a feeling of abandonment and decay.
It wasn’t really the drive we were hoping for. We did however very much enjoy the farm stays we spent our evenings on. Staying with the locals in their beautiful small farms, mixing with other travellers, moaning about the state of the roads. Eating the local produce.

We nearly left Laos after this experience. But we decided to give it one more chance. Carl had a visit to the barbours, I had my nails done. Attacking my roots with a sachet of chestnut brown hair dye, mixed in an ashtray and applied with a spork, the next morning we felt renewed. We got on a bus and went to Thakhek. We knew we had to give this country a chance to impress us.

The bus was local and ridiculous. Turning into a circus of local vendors every time we stopped. Packed when it left Pakse, with extra seats provided by folding plastic stools between the seats in the aisles. The journey was okay and involved a somewhat disorganised connector. My overriding memory of the journey was the dead girl lying in the road, with her scooter under a Toyota Hilux truck. The front of the truck, stoved in. The girl flipped up and over before she hit the road. The scooter drivers here often ride with their social media feed in one hand and no crash helmets. She didn’t stand a chance when pulling out of a rural junction, distracted.

Nothing explains why the driver of our bus filmed the scene on his phone and posted it on social media. Whilst he was still driving.

Thakhek is a crumbling town of ancient French architecture. The hotel we chose was a colonial delight. The following morning, we were disturbed to see an almost continual stream of diners for Breakfast attending, wrapped in bandages. Legs and elbows. A broken arm. We missed the guy in the wheelchair who was wearing a neck collar. He had left the day before. We decided to delay by an hour. An extra coffee seemed like a great idea as it was raining.

Deciding to undertake the loop anticlockwise, we left carefully. The Limestone islands in the countryside hiding in the gloom. The photos we wanted, we couldn’t take in the weather. We took the time to visit the caves at Tham Nang Ene Cave. There are so many caves here that you have to decide before you leave which ones you want to visit.

Shortly after we left, we discovered we had a flat tyre. Hopping off the bike, walking and pushing it for more than a couple of kilometres, all the while trying to find someone who could fix it.

In this area of the world, you can identify a tyre garage by a couple of tyres hung outside. It’s perhaps not entirely obvious unless you are looking for it. I had walked on ahead (as I wasn’t pushing a scooter). Carl disappeared on a regular basis into petrol stations and roadside businesses to ask for help, and it was because of one of these diversions that we found ourselves being met by a local policeman. Whilst we were being provided with a new inner tube, it was fascinating to speak to a Local Laos gentleman – excellent English, having spent many years in Canada. We were able to ask very frank questions about the country its past and its future. it was a real pleasure to gain a better understanding of the country at a level you just can’t get from reading a book.

Having paid for our newly fixed tyre and saying our goodbyes and thankyou’s, we were back half an hour later to reclaim three missing screws holding some part of the plastic casing near my foot pegs. I had become aware it was loose and just ‘wasnt right’.

By the time we reached our accommodation for the night, it had been a much longer day than we had expected – the sun was descending and I was cold. The view for supper was extraordinary. A flooded forest, now part of the Hydroelectric dam system. We loved this guest house and resolved to return rather than finishing the ‘loop’ with a few miles of tedious highway. We planned to head to Kong Lor Cave, and then come back the way we came.

The drive to Kong Lor Cave we knew was going to be long. 150km. It was going to be at least four hours. The drive was engaging even for me spending yet another day perched on the back of the Honda, slowly loosing the feeling in my bum. There are some amazing stone buddahs which suddenly appear on the side of the road.

There was also a long stretch of road at which they were trying to repair the road. Landslides have made the area almost impassable but a huge civil engineering project is underway. We visited in 2025 and I can only assume it will be five years before it’s finished.

All of this loop has a lot of huge freight trucks. It is so close to Vietnam and the roads to China and Thailand that it’s a major route for the transportation of raw materials. You have to be careful. The road surface isn’t the best. Don’t try it if this is your first rodeo on a scooter, be at your overnight stay before the setting sun causes shadows on the road making the pot holes difficult to see. It became easy to see how the accidents we had seen had occurred and we were determined to stay safe.

Shortly after the clouds of dust made the visibility on the road at the civil engineering project impossible to navigate, we turned left and headed to our homestay at the entrance of the Kong Lor Cave.

We planned to have an early start, visit the caves and then start the journey back.

The following day it was a ‘big one’. Carls 60th and here he is in Laos, a land locked country- for a man who loves nothing more than shunning cities for the Beach.
I am off to sack myself as ‘route planner’ but first a bit of an Indiana Jones day today.

The Kong Lor Cave. Not just a cave but a box canyon, with a river cutting through the mountain.
You walk to the cave mouth, board a small boat and travel through the 7.5 km of tunnels along
the river to emerge the other side of the mountain. Quite an experience!
The cave mouth is at the end of a 43km road along the valley floor, this we did yesterday,
staying overnight at a gorgeous home stay which advertises itself as the closest to the caves.
You pay for a ticket to the caves as you enter and then you’re enticed to another counter to
exchange your footwear for flip flops. Somewhere around this point we left our motorcycle keys.
We have pondered how it happened many times since, but after our canoe trip, mostly in the
dark, we discovered we didn’t know where our keys were.
We are however, forever thankful to whoever handed them in to flip-flop man. The man who
watched in bemusement as I mimed ‘motorbike’, ‘key’ ‘lost’ and then stood up to take our keys
off a hook on the wall, above his head.

We had decided even before we had started the ‘loop’ that we intended not to continue the loop at this point, but to return the way we had come. The overcast weather on the first day had left us missing some of the photos we wanted and the alternative of a few hours on a highway wasn’t really appealing. So we returned to huge road building scheme. It’s a nightmare to drive through huge clouds of dust as Convoys of articulated lorry’s crawl up the steep road, pulverising the earth to a fine dust making it almost impossible to see more than a few metres ahead. But it’s definitely worth it.

Was this the Highlight of our brief visit to Laos? As part of the Thakhek Loop, definitely. I would come to Laos just to ride this tour and its scenery. It’s pretty impressive!

The following day we left for Chang Mai. Sadly and unfortunately we are now on ‘countdown’ to travelling home. Its been a funny but educational, inspiring few months.