Having arrived in the late afternoon the previous day, we had not explored much of this town on the eastern bank of the Nam Song (Song River). However, we had the whole day ahead of us, and we were intent on getting out of town and into the caves on the western side of the river.
We woke late and had a late breakfast – it was the first time wed taken it easy in Laos. The buffet breakfast at Phetchaleun Hotel was fairly basic, but there was an incredibly fresh baguette on offer, and it mixed perfectly with the freshly made omelette, so I had a very simple but very tasty breakfast (which I enjoyed with tea and pineapple juice).
Wed decided to walk across the toll bridge on the Song River and make our way on foot to the closest caves, so we headed off at 9am towards the towering karsts on the western horizon. We paid our toll to cross the Nam Song Bridge, but after walking a very short distance we soon realised the caves were
a lot further from Vang Vieng than wed initially thought. So we made an executive decision to hire a dune buggy for a couple of hours. These machines were straight out of a Mad Max movie, so we knew theyd get us to the caves a lot quicker than walking.
We stopped at the first hire place we came to, and within minutes we were buckled in and contributing to some serious noise pollution – these things were loud. And to our amazement, there was no checking of licenses, no driving lessons, no safety checks
It was a difficult transition. Id never driven a dune buggy, and Id never driven on the right hand side of the road. And suddenly here I was, on a dusty and bumpy rural Laotian road in a dune buggy – I was in bogan heaven. We missed the first cave turnoff, so we doubled back and turned into a rough dirt road which soon turned into a very rough dirt road, then a barely discernible dirt track, then a dry river bed
At the point where wed started to question whether we were lost, we stumbled upon a dodgy wooden sign
hanging from a single nail on a post that said ‘Cave with an arrow pointing towards the bottom of a towering karst. We walked along a narrow dirt trail to an opening in the foliage that looked like a cave entrance, but there was no signage and no signs of life, so we werent sure if it was a cave or not. There was only one thing to do – go inside and look! We donned our head torches (which wed packed for this specific purpose) and clambered inside. At first I thought it was a simple overhang, but after clambering up a small rise we suddenly found ourselves in a large dark chamber – we had found Khan Kham Cave.
Our head torches werent terribly bright, but we could make out the vague outline of a sculpted Buddha in front of us. In the excitement of finding this cave temple, wed neglected to check our surrounds, until Ren accidently found a huge stalactite hanging over a crevasse that disappeared into the darkness below – only metres from where we were standing. We couldnt calculate the depth of the crevasse, but it seemed to be a sheer drop –
possibly 10 metres or more. It was an abrupt reality check. We needed to be a little more careful in these dark, damp, claustrophobic and cavernous caves.
We tried to capture a few photos of the Buddha, but it was far more difficult than we thought. We had to train both our head torches onto the sculptured icon, which meant operating our cameras in absolute darkness. The photos we captured were okay, but a little too grainy for our liking.
We retraced our steps to the cave entrance, strapped ourselves into the dune buggy and headed off in search of more caves. We travelled back along the river bed, dirt track and dirt road, then continued on the main road until we came to another dirt track leading to a cave. We bumped our way over the dusty track until we arrived at a small ticket hut manned by a friendly old Laotian man.
