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Thakek Loop Day 1

Right I'm on my flight back home so let's see if I can catch up on a week's worth of posts before touchdown.

After a chaotic awakening at 3am by some people breaking a fan, I woke up at a more normal time and got some breakfast. I ordered the French baguette with butter and jam but it came as hard as a brick so is definitely up there in one of the worst breakfasts so far. I didn't want the semi automatic bikes to run out so I asked to rent a bike and a very reliable sounding rental company "Pokemon Go" came and deliverer me a beautiful blue Honda Wave. I packed my bag and went to head out on the start of my 4 day journey. I had never ridden a semi automatic bike before but apparently its pretty simple so I thought I could just ride off but turns out I had no idea why I needed a kick starter (turns out I didn't?) and that I needed to take it out of neutral (I'm a genius I know). A quick YouTube video later and I was off. I swapped my helmet for a better one and picked up a strap to keep my bag in the basket and grabbed some snacks from the shop before filling up on fuel.

Finally, 4 stops later I was actually off and starting on my way out of Thakek at 10am. The first little stint is along a section of road called "Cave Alley" named after having a bazillion caves every couple meters. Another thing this road had was a shit ton of lorries as it was went between borders of Vietnan and Thailand and also joined onto the road up to Vientiane so honestly it wasn't that fun driving alongside these 100x bigger and heavier death machines chugging along. I had already seen alot of caves in Vietnam so I felt like I didn't need to stop at every cave and only the ones I thought would be different enough.

I ended up skipping quite a few, Elephant Cave (on purpose), Buddha Cave (on accident), and Xiengliab (after meeting a Swedish guy who had just come out and said it was a pretty much just a cave. We rode together to a swimming hole super closeby called Falang. We had come to realise that the reason that the loop was recommended for 4 days wasn't because the length of the driving but the amount of stops. This was fine but honestly I was hoping to relive some of my Cao Bang Loop glory days and cruise through beautiful landscapes. Don't get me wrong, there were some beautiful cliffs about but I felt like I couldn't really get "in" to the driving as there were pretty consistent stops all the way around.

The swimming spot was nice, a bunch of little huts along the river and it wasn't too busy and felt nice to cool off. As I said before, the thunderstorms yesterday meant we had nothing but beautiful blue skies today so it was quite warm. Unfortunately, after along about a minute of floating around I cut my foot open on a rock and had to pull myself back onto the little hut and patch myself up. Generously, the Swedish guy (I knew his name at one point but it's long gone in my mind now) lent me some heavy duty tape that worked as a makeshift bandage to keep the plaster on my foot. As we were leaving, we were stopped by a couple of monks who asked us to take pictures with them which I think is pretty funny.

There were 2 more cave closeby that I thought I probably should stop at as I hadn't stopped at any caves so far in Cave Alley. Unfortunately though, the first one Pha Nya In was closed which just left Nong Aen Cave for me to explore. This cave was pretty cool though as it was lit up with lots of different coloured LEDs which made it feel a bit different to the rest of them. There was also a boat ride through it but I think it wasn't running today maybe because of the water level and the season. Plus, there was small viewpoint which was nice.

In my head, if I kept going along the route now I would get to my guesthouse for the night way too early. That combined with being sick of seeing other people, I decided to go slightly off route to a town called Mahaxay to find some lunch as a river passed through it and I reckoned I could find a nice spot. The road wasn't long but was a horribly bumpy gravel track which I still don't think my spine has forgiven me for. Plus, when I got there I couldn't find a single restaurant so ended up buying some rice wrapped up in banana leaves and a mango to substitute as a lunch, with some of my snacks. I found a really nice spot along the river in a wooden hut to eat my food. The rice was horrible, it had something inside that I kept trying to convince myself was alright but I kept having to alternate with slices of mango just so I could get it down. I ended up not finishing the rice but the mango was fantastic and I felt like I had mastered cutting slices.

I did a little photoshoot of my bike and the background before heading back along the terrible road and getting on the main loop. I had gotten used to the semi automatic now and was really enjoying the versatility of gears even if breaking with my foot was weird still. My thinking earlier about needing to waste time was absolutely wrong and turns out if I didn't want to drive in the dark, I'd have to skip some stuff which was fine, I enjoyed my little adventure and it meant I was behind the loose group of people that left this morning from Thakek and felt more solo. I stopped at a viewpoint instead of more caves or a waterfall as I didn't need more caves and I don't think the waterfall would have been as good as the viewpoint this time of year but would have been nice if I had time.

The viewpoint was at an abandoned waterpark which was really eerie but I paid this random dude and parked up before heading up these red metal stairs. The stairs up were really good to be fair and after briefly passing through a little cave and continuing up, I made it to the top and had enough time to snap a couple pics before having to almost run down as I needed the toilet really bad. When I got to the bottom I had a semi traumatic experience in the abandoned waterpark toilet before heading onwards. I stopped at a café and had some samosas (they didn't have any spring rolls) before realising I had no more time to stop today if I wanted to make it before sun down which was a bit of a shame as there was the "Orchid Path Viewpoint" which sounded nice.

The place I was staying at was called Thalang and was a town that stood on the edge of a massive artificial lake which was known for its very eerie looking sea of dead tree trunks rising up through the water. All of the environmental and social issues of building a dam and flooding a large amount of land displacing animals and villages aside - when the sun was setting over this lake it was absolutely stunning and I had to keep stopping to take pictures of the beautiful sunset. There were a few guesthouses all in the same area but the main one was called Sabaidee (hello in Lao) and was where everyone went in the evening as they had a well known unlimited barbqueue that I was excited for. After checking in and getting one of the last dorm beds available, I got a beer and got ready to enjoy a nice BBQ.

The evening was really nice. Lots of people sat around with a beer, lots of really yummy BBQ things (mostly kebab sticks) and we ended the night with a good few rounds of curling without ice (I can't remember the name of the game where you have to throw your balls closest to the smaller ball and whoever is closest wins).Read more