Tha Khaek
Travel Guide
In a nutshell
This pretty little town on the Mekong opposite Thailand is a must for those who love exploring caves. Under your own steam or with a guide, there are plenty to tire you out and earn that sunset beer by the river.
Khammuan Province used to be mostly a thoroughfare for travellers passing between Thailand and Vietnam, or heading north and south to more popular destinations. With three NBCAs on offer, Khammuan would seem to hold unlimited potential in terms of trekking and tours. But, more so than in the rest of the Southern Laos, the poor condition of the roads and the lack of infrastructure has been holding it back.
The sleepy provincial capital of Khammuan province, Tha Khaek lies across the Mekong River from the bustling Thai town of Nakhon Phanom. While Tha Khaek is certainly not the most exciting town in Laos, it is a good deal more interesting than its cross-river neighbour, and, relatively speaking, it's the biggest, most tourist-friendly town in the province.
Tha Khaek means "Guest landing". Originally, this was a reference to the town's stature as a riverine trading outpost, but the name still holds water today. Foreign visitors continuously pour into town, crossing the Mekong by boat, and Laotians make frequent day-trips to buy goods in Nakhon Phanom. Tha Khaek is a full-on, international border crossing, and Lao visas on arrival are available crossing into Laos.
The construction effort to transform Route 12 from a dirt track to a major east-west trade corridor starts just outside of town, and Tha Khaek is already beginning to get a little bit busier in anticipation of its eventual growth, luring more and more Laotians to move into town from outlying areas. This growth, however, hasn't yet resulted in a huge influx of western tourists. Accommodation options haven't increased in recent years, and the town is visited only by a steady trickle of backpackers, the vast majority of whom stay at the Tha Khaek Travelodge.
For now, Route 12 courses along the southern edge of the Phou Hin Boun NBCA, a massive limestone forest with numerous pristine and picturesque rivers and lakes. And where there is limestone, there are caves: route 12 offers easy access to half a dozen or more, the most recent of which, Buddha Cave, was only discovered (or rather, rediscovered) in 2004. But the most remarkable cave in Phou Hin Boun is the eerie and amazing Konglor Cave -- a 7.5 km underground river that can be navigated by boat. It's inaccessible from the south, but there are good roads leading north to the village of Na Hin (also known as Kheun Kham) from which the cave can be reached on a day-trip or overnight. The road to the cave, too, is the scene of another road construction effort, and it becomes easier to navigate with every passing week.
Tha Khaek in general, and the Travelodge in particular, are increasingly becoming a staging area for the 'Konglor Cave Loop', as tourists show up here looking to take a three-to-five day motorbike journey from Tha Khaek, through Nakai and Lak Xao, to Na Hin for a trip to Konglor Cave, and then returning from the north via route 13S.
But you don't have to do it on your own anymore: there's a new tourist information centre that is conducting a pilot project to test out three new guided tours of the nearby Phou Hin Boun NBCA, all of which are worth looking into.
Further afield, the Nakai-Nam Theun NBCA along the eastern border with Vietnam is the scene of a massive public works project -- a hydro-electric dam has been built, and a 50km stretch of the Nam Theun River Valley is going to be flooded -- the inundation process is scheduled to begin in August of 2007.
Conservationists are scrambling to measure the impact the reservoir is going to have on local wildlife, and whole communities are being uprooted and moved away from the inundation zone. The park itself is off-limits to tourists at the moment, but a new road has been cut into the forest along what will be the western edge of the reservoir, from Mahaxai in Khammuan Province, to Lak Xao in Bolikhamsai.
A motorcycle journey along this road is a dusty, bumping, and demanding trek that serves as nothing so much as an object lesson in how an undeveloped country becomes industrialised. Nevertheless, the road is navigated almost daily by at least a few tourists undertaking what's becoming known as the Konglor Cave Loop -- probably one of the most interesting and unique motorcycle treks available in the region. Dirt-bikers will want to head here sooner rather than later before they pave all the roads.
For the more adventurous, travel into the remainder of the province is possible and can be especially rewarding -- rest assured you'll be the only foreigner on the truck-bus!
Text and/or map last updated on 5th September, 2010.
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Looping the Laos Loop, starting in Tha Khaek
Ever since I’d heard stories about the Konglor Caves in central Laos I’d decided that I really wanted to visit. I love caves, and ones that involve a 7.5km underground longboat ride through the darkness sounded fantastic. So we caught the ‘VIP’ bus (a wonderful multi-coloured affair that looked like a cross between a 70’s disco and your granny’s living room on wheels) to the town of Thakek to work out how to get there.
The guesthouse where we stayed (The Thakek Travellers Lodge) turned out to be the place to begin ‘The Loop’ – a 450km circular tour by motorcycle through spectacular unspoilt Laos landscapes, with the Konglor Caves as the central highlight.
Our little party of three were slightly apprehensive but very excited by the prospect of a new adventure. The giant Visitors’ Book in reception was full of tales, drawings, maps, advice and warnings written by travellers who have already completed the journey. ‘Everyone seemed to be obsessed with one long stretch of road that apparently is in really bad shape (one writer described it as ‘36km of PURE HELL’, so as beginner riders we were a bit scared, but decided to take the plunge anyway. After all, only the minority of people in the book mentioned any hospitalisations!
The following morning we were up early and the first in the queue at Mr.Ku’s scooter hire shop next door. Mr.Ku is THE man to set you up for the Loop and seems to have quite a reputation amongst those in the know. He gave us our first shaky lesson in how to drive a bike with gears, issued us with a map, told us to take it easy and waved us off on our way.
Vroom, vroom, we were off!
The first problem we encountered was that none of our helmets fitted. As soon as we hit 50kph they filled with wind and tipped backwards on our heads so we looked like three strange aliens on motorbikes. We solved this by making turbans from our sarongs and then stuffing the helmets on top, kind-of Sikh-meets-Hells Angels effect. At this point you could have shot us head-first out of a cannon and our skulls would remain intact.
The second problem was avoiding the cattle that roams freely across the road with bored look on their faces. You would have thought that fast-moving traffic would be pretty scary for a slow-moving cow, but apparently not. Memories of India came flooding back, but these caramel-coloured cows seemed much happier and less flea-bitten than their Indian cousins.
The central Laos scenery really is truly spectacular and there is no better way to appreciate it than from the back of a bike. At times the landscape flattened into vast plains full of grazing water buffalo and we felt like we’d been magically transported to Africa. We’d then suddenly find ourselves weaving up steep hairpin bends of mountain landscapes to rival the Californian national parks, then through cool palm tree-lined roads and paddy fields full of people bent low under their straw hats. The countryside and villages were all completely unspoilt. It was fun to wave at the children as we passed (they would run out from their bamboo huts to the edge of the road to yell ‘Sabaidee’ (hello) and blow kisses.)
The stretch of the road ‘from hell’ was actually pretty bad, but a whole lot of fun. Imagine terrain full of boulders, jagged stones, big holes, loose gravel, sharp bends, steep climbs and sudden drops and you’ve got the idea. Perhaps a MotorX driver would have made it look easy, but our little scooters didn’t really have the steering or suspension for this kind of thing. Still, we had a real laugh tackling it and soon enough the road evened out and became silky-smooth again to give our bruised bottoms a rest. By the end of the trip we all felt like biker pro’s, laughing in the face of sticking gears, dodgy sparkplugs and temperamental dashboards.
The Konglor Caves certainly didn’t disappoint. We were up early to drive the spectacular final 8km towards the caves in the misty morning light, then hired a longboat driver to take us into the mouth of the cave, where we waded though shallow water in the darkness to take our seats on his narrow wooden boat. It was eerily dark as we put-putted along the underground waterway, with just the dim light of our head-torches to allow us to make out shapes around us. At first the roof of the cave was low, but it soon opened out into vast chambers of echoing blackness. At times the water became too shallow to pass, so we had to climb out and help push the boat free (I almost lost another flip flop). It was strange to reach the other side of the mountain and sit blinking in the bright sunshine again.
At night we found lodgings in tiny villages where we could pay a few kip for a bed in a bamboo hut room and some well-earned rice or noodles. Our favourite place was owned by Mr.Paython, a lovely man who gave us a Petanque lesson and rounds of Laos whisky round the campfire. He asked us to recommend his place in the big pink visitors’ book back at Thakhek (and also to send him a Western wife to add to his collection – according to him he’s been divorced five times already!). We had a river view on the second night and decided to take an early evening dip. This was great, except for the brown lumps of unidentified organic matter floating past. We kept our mouths clamped shut and tried not to think of cow ****.
The final day involved 180km of riding on already-sore bums, so it wasn’t for the fainthearted, but we loved every minute and didn’t want to give our bikes back. We returned to Thakhek victorious and so glad we’d decided to loop the loop!
By lucygriffith (dabbler)
Written on 29th December, 2010 after a visit to Tha Khaek in December, 2010