Pakse and 4000 Islands

It was fortunate for us that we had come to really understand the nature of life and travel in Laos because otherwise, our day of travel from Konglor village to Pakse would really have felt hellish.

We knew it was pushing it a bit, to say the least, to visit the amazing Konglor cave in the morning, then leave quickly thereafter to make our way south to Pakse, a journey that even if you believed the listed times would see us barely arrive before the calendar day flipped over. But we had counted up our remaining days in SE Asia and wanted to hoard precious time for adventures in Cambodia. So off we went…

First mode of transport was truck taxi from Konglor village to a larger village with our traveling companions - a really friendly couple from Spain and their two amazing kids. For half of this ride, Ben was standing on the rear platform of the truck, hanging on to the steel bars as the vehicle bounced around on country roads, villagers jumping on and off along the way. Really fun and great natural air conditioning! We hopped off this truck at its final stop and jumped on another one that was heading to Tha Kaek. Tha Kaek is the only town of any size in the area and conveniently located on the main highway used by the public busses that troll up and down this stretch of the country. Before leaving, Ben haggled for a bag of sticky rice and some strips of beef jerky dangling from thin pieces of bamboo like a meat-mobile. Delicious! We’re pretty sure it was beef, although none of the local dogs would look us in the eye…

Now, in Laos, it’s possible to flag down a bus in virtually any circumstance imaginable, whether a public bus or a cushy looking VIP bus. And it just so happened that as our truck rounded the bend onto the main highway that a public bus was stopped and loading on passengers. After shouting a few words at our driver he pulled over and waited as we went to check out the price, destination and state of the bus. The first two items met our criteria, however the last was clearly below expectations as all the seats were filled and people were sitting up the central aisle on tiny plastic stools. After chuckling at this scene, we hopped back on our trusty truck and continued at a slow pace down the road.

About an hour later as Ben was engaged in a fierce competition of Crazy Eights that he had taught the kids, a beautiful shiny bus came roaring up from behind with the door man waving frantically in our direction. Assuming that he wanted to pass us, it was only after the bus pulled ahead that we realized it had a card in the window with the destination, PAKSE, in big bold letters. Crap! This guy was definitely trying to ask us if we wanted a ride and we missed our big chance for a comfy ride to Pakse that surely would have arrived several hours before we bumbled our way into town.

No use dwelling on what could have been. We did make it to Tha Kaek after many card games and we did get on a public bus for Pakse that was leaving right away. This ride was quite the experience. The bus itself looked pretty mean from the outside with its two flaming skull stickers on the front and random junk strapped to the top. We made uncountable stops along the way seemingly whenever anyone needed to answer the call of nature, got a bit hungry, wanted to stretch their legs, needed to deliver a parcel, wanted to say hello to friends, and every other reason under the sun. We took these stops in stride and wandered around outside of the bus with the locals, sometimes haggling for street food and stretching our legs. We finally arrived in Pakse at 1am and after a long and melodramatic bargaining session with a tuk-tuk driver involving many instances of us walking away indignant with arms held high in the air, we got a ride to a hostel and stumbled gratefully into bed. Haggling is important (and kind of fun) at any time of day!

We awoke the next day to discover that our hostel, Sabaidy 2 Guesthouse, was actually quite nice and had a great breakfast. The effort of the previous day was worth it! Our two main reasons for staying in Pakse were first, because it was as far as we could get in a day and still make it to a bed, and second, because the Xplore Asia company was in town and they specialized in adventure tours in southern Laos and northern Cambodia. We were impressed after meeting with them when they recommended that we wait until reaching Cambodia, where conditions were much better, to realize our kayaking dreams. Armed with this info, we decided to spend one day in town and buy a ticket to the 4000 Islands, in southern Laos, departing the following day.

This gave us one day to give Pakse a try. Since we really weren’t too interested in package tours to temples or river boat rides and we were tired, hot and sweaty, we decided that a pool day was in order. There were two hotels in town with a pool and our first stop was a serious luxury palace, whose front desk staff assured us, after appraising the two sweaty travelers in front of them, that their pool was closed for renovations. No matter, we moved along to option two deeper into the “real” Pakse and were treated to a nice look at life in this city. Certainly we were the only travelers in this area of town and we received a lot of curious stares. This next hotel was a dream as the pool was outside right by the river and there were no staff around to impress. We jumped in gleefully and splashed and lounged the afternoon away.

On our way back through town we had noticed some fun looking restaurants perched along the banks of the river and chose one that looked reasonably popular. We really got lucky with our choice as after starting in to our food and refreshing Beer Lao, an acoustic guitar performance began. Up until that point the music we had heard in Laos was truly terrible, like pots being banged randomly together over a techno beat and high pitched vocals. But the musicians on stage this evening were really good and you could have imagined hearing songs by artists like Bob Dylan and Credence Clearwater Revival. Our neighbours even struck up a friendly conversation with us, which led to Ben receiving an email from his new best buddy in Laos “Lord Zone”. Despite the unique name, we’re not sure that this friendship has a long term future…

All in all we had a great time in Pakse doing none of the usual things people do there. It was refreshing and another great lesson learned regarding the road less traveled. We happily boarded our minivan the next morning for the 4000 Islands, a string of little islands where the Mekong broadens in its southern approach to Cambodia. We decided again on only a one day stop to break up our journey and to spend some time checking out the area and more importantly, the hammocks. One of the ladies in our minivan actually worked at one of the small bungalow operations on the island of Don Det where we were heading and so we were inexorably pulled toward their accommodations at Paradise Bungalows. Paradise came cheap at about $4 per night and the hammock was as good as advertised, with a view overlooking the Mekong River.

After some relaxing, we set off on a walk with the lure of a waterfall at the end of the road. Since we had left this escapade a bit late in the day, the huge and threatening thunder clouds stopped our advance before the final destination. However, it was definitely fun to get a glimpse of rural life on the island.

The Don Det experience itself is actually quite touristy. When you arrive at the island’s harbour there are literally bungalows along both sides of the shore for more than a kilometre and the small harbour town is littered with restaurants mostly blasting Bob Marley and one winning the noise competition with its non-stop movies. It was fun to relax for a day in the hammocks and go into town for dinner that night for a chat with other travelers, but we had no regrets about moving on the next day and crossing the border into Cambodia.

We made it through the border that next morning, after the expected hassling and bribing, and were dropped off in Stung Treng, a place where only two other people jumped off the bus with us. We smiled, once again enjoying the great feeling of a fresh start in a little visited part of the world!

Vientiane and Konglor Cave

After landing back in Luang Prabang from our river boat trip, we picked up last minute overnight tickets on the “VIP” bus heading to the Capital city of Vientiane. Every bus company seemed to be advertising different departure and arrival times, although the pictures of the bus were certainly identical. We had previously met a travel company operator who had spent some of his youth in Toronto and so we placed our faith and bus fare in his trust – despite the fact that he thought we’d be arriving at 3:30am. Ouch. At least we got to take a tuk-tuk to the bus terminal, fun!

The bus ride turned into a completely hilarious experience. The most that can be said in defence of the experience is that at least we had reserved seats and didn’t have to battle to maintain our positions. As with a lot of transport in Laos they like to use the A/C when people are loading up and then promptly turn it off upon departure, opening the front folding doors and allowing the steamy evening air in as some sort of consolation prize. Despite connecting the two most important cities in Laos, the road was horrible, twisting and turning, and the bus staff seemed to need overnight entertainment in the form of blaring Laos rock music. To cap it all off, stops of any nature (bathroom breaks, chats, food, pickups, drop-offs, deliveries…) were made all night long.

Not the best of sleeps, but on the upside, the slow progress allowed us to arrive in Vientiane at a much more reasonable 6:30am. We were quite tired and after checking out one budget option with a dead cockroach in the room, we decided to splurge a bit on a clean hotel in the centre of town. For us, the capital city was simply a place to break up the journey to the south, so we spent our day without much of a schedule, wandering through some of the monuments and Buddhist sights in town.

In front of the famous golden Pha That Luang, the most important national monument in Laos, we found a statue that people were taking turns to approach and give offerings. Looked like the thing to do, so Ben gave a donation and tried his turn at lighting some incense sticks in front of the unknown likeness. He approached humbly and conducted his audience with due humility, but noticed some scornful stares when making his exit past the rows of…removed…footwear. Oooops! He had just disrespected what’s-his-name terribly...oh well, it's the thought that counts, right?

We arranged our next bus journey for the following morning to make our way to Konglor village, jump off point to one of SE Asia’s most amazing cave experiences. This bus ride was miles apart from our earlier overnight-mare – clean, comfy and direct. It appeared to us that the government must be making a targeted effort to get more tourists and development into this part of Laos. We arrived and found a quaint town with rice fields and typical stilt-house construction. Meeting an interesting traveler from Ecuador, we resolved to hit the cave together the following morning.

We walked through the village and into a forested area leading to the small river where boats were waiting for us to make the 7.5km journey through the dark cave. As we approached, we could tell this was going to be REALLY fun (and a bit nerve racking)!

The young boat drivers and their spotters perched on the bow of the small wooden boat wore powerful headlamps to help illuminate the total darkness of the cave. We also brought along our lights to catch a glimpse of the contours of the great, natural tunnel. Unbelievably, the waterway wound through the base of the limestone mountain in twists and turns, sometimes with the ceiling so tight you felt you could reach up and touch it and at other times opening into cathedral-like cavernous chambers that could be the home of dwarf kings from the Lord of the Rings.

Our boat slowed midway through the journey and pulled over to a sandy embankment. We all jumped out and as we groped around to get our bearings in the darkness, the spotter dashed off to the wall of the cave and with the flip of a switch, illuminated the path forward. We walked along, amazed at the shapes of stalagtites and stalagmites lit up in different colours by the creative display. This walking portion was quite extensive and gave us an opportunity to get up close and personal with the creepy cave.

We went back on the board the boat for some yelling and echo testing, until we began to see the light, the one at the end of the tunnel. We eventually emerged into bright sunshine on the other side and were greeted with the amazing sight of another similar boat headed into the cave we had just departed, filled with about 20 locals and a cow! Really. What for us was an amazing tourist attraction is simply a practical commuting option for the villagers on the other side of the mountain.

We spent a few moments checking out the other side of the cave and then spun around for the return journey. This time we decided that some music was in order to liven up the atmosphere and settled on Bohemian Rhapsody for its great opportunities to yell nonsense at the top of our lungs. We won over our Laos guides with this performance and they began making requests fore more. Ben tried to turn the tables on them by requesting some Laos music, but after seeing that they were too shy to comply he launched into his own version of Laos pop using all of the words he had learned on the trip so far. The guides found this hilarious, despite the fact that to their ears he surely sang like a three year old: “Helloooo, delicious, Beer Lao, thank you, I like, goodbye….”

Upon arriving back at the forested embankment and now obviously the best of friends, Ben was invited to join the Laos crew in a favourite national game of kick volleyball. We can’t remember the name exactly, but we can remember that it is quite difficult! Each team gets three hits to make it over the net and the game is played with a softball sized sphere made traditionally of rattan wound together, but now usually made of plastic. It does hurt a bit when making contact but the hollow centre seems to help in absorbing most of the impact. The Laoations were really nice and gave Ben lots of opportunities to make some plays and occasionally he even managed a good effort. Great fun!

Unfortunately we couldn’t stick around long as we had to rush back to jump in the 11am truck taxi taking us from the village back to the main north-south highway where we hoped to find a bus and make the very long journey south to the city of Pakse where we could again chase our dreams of kayaking along the rushing Mekong.

We smiled as we ran towards our ride, knowing that this day would likely involve almost every mode of transportation imaginable – boat, truck, bus and motorcycle. Onwards!

We also learned something very important through the Konglor experience: The cliché that “the journey IS the destination” is startlingly true in Laos. By getting off the beaten track between Luang Prabang and Vientiane and heading into the less-frequented south, we started to feel a deeper connection with the Laos people. We were beginning to understand the Laos way. They have a different mentality from their neighbours in Vietnam and Thailand, who are more business oriented – taking it easy and slow to the point where a half hour wait for meals or difficulty with arranging an activity for eager tourists is not uncommon. With this new frame of reference, we began to accept that our fate was no longer in our hands and enjoyed the experience all the more.

Luang Prabang and Nong Khiaw

After the luxury of the Shangri-La hotel in Bangkok we knew absolutely that our next accommodations could not possibly measure up. However, we were excited to be back on the road moving again, and landing in beautiful Luang Prabang was a great place to start.

A lot of money has poured into this town since being given UNESCO world heritage status and many of the French colonial homes have been restored to their full period lustre. Combined with its location on a peninsula bordered by the Mekong river on one side and the Nam Khan river on the other, it makes for a stunning setting. At this time of year the rivers are filled with silt from the heavy rains and the rivers run a colour of brown that reminds you of rich hot chocolate (please do not drink it).

We checked into a nice cozy guesthouse just off of the main road and decided to take a bit of a walk around town. In addition to the French architecture there are many Buddhist Wats around town and it was typical to see orange robed monks walking the streets with their umbrellas. We spent a lot of our time walking down the main street that had lots of small shops, restaurants and food stands as well as the night market.

We also got our first introduction to Beer Lao, which began a love affair with this fine brew throughout the country – you’ll definitely notice the theme in our pictures! Although many other beer companies have tried to muscle their way into the beer market, the Laos people have remained loyal to their national brand and for a good reason – it is tasty!! It also goes very well with the delicious Laos cuisine, which we enjoyed at streetside eateries.

All of Laos has a VERY laid back attitude and we found it difficult at first to deal with the relaxed approach we experienced with every local encounter. For people like us who arrive with big plans for seeing sights, spending time in nature and having meaningful exchanges with the Laos people, the slow beginning can be a bit frustrating.

But we persevered and found our own pace in Luang Prabang. One day we decided to check out one of the nearby waterfalls and opted to rent mountain bikes instead of paying a set fee for a tuk-tuk ride and tour. The exercise that we had missed in Thailand came abruptly into focus as we biked about 2 hours up and over long hills to get to our destination. We paid the boatman to take us across the river and took a splash in the waterfall’s running water (more like a river on a bit of an angle really). As we rode back on the boat to our waiting bikes, the heavens opened up in a serious downpour. Given that the hills on the return trip would be steeper than on the approach we gladly paid for a tuk-tuk drive with our bikes mounted on top. At least our hearts were in the right place…

On another one of our walkabouts, we had a very successful textile outing. Ben got his man bag fixed by a roadside seamstress for about $0.50 and Patricia found some nice fabric to make a skirt. The ladies next to the fabric shop were running sewing machines with expert skill and a few hours later our intrepid lady traveler was sporting an authentic Lao skirt. Throughout our trip this garment got a lot of attention and appreciation from the local people who seemed to take our interest in their fashion as a high compliment.



As we continued along, we spotted a restaurant advertising Lao traditional music and dance along with dinner. We promptly returned to check out the local show and to taste some higher end Laos cooking. The food was really fantastic and we had great seats at the very front of the restaurant (there was only one other table occupied)!

The show was also very interesting with traditional Laos instruments played by four young guys who would trade places at each piece of equipment after a few songs. The music is nothing like we’d heard before with a simple drumbeat, one guy playing only a single bell (this guy always looked really bored), another guy surrounded within a low walled fortress of metal gongs and last but not least a player of some kind of wooden xylophone in the shape of a boat.

The dancers added a lot of flair to the show with their intricate hand movements and frequent costume changes. A lot of it reminded us of performances we had seen in Thailand and we later learned that the Khmer dynasty originating in Cambodia and of Angkor Wat fame had a big influence on culture in neighbouring Thailand and Laos.


We took a stroll afterwards and found a small cool bar with a Loatian band playing live music, oldie goldies such as Beatles and Janis Joplin with incredibly fantastic guitar work and voices. It was cute that they couldn't pronounce the "s" in plural words - this only added to the experience!

Overall, it was the laid back, picturesque atmosphere of Luang Prabang that charmed us. We spent a few great mornings on the patio at the Art House Café enjoying breakfast with bottomless mugs of delicious organic Laos coffee. Ahhhh…

Although we could have stayed a long time in Luang Prabang repeating our relaxed days, we yearned to see some of the wilder mountainous north and hopefully experience a boat trip on the mighty Mekong. So, we hopped on a van bound for Nong Khiaw about 4 hours north up the big brown waterway. On arrival we searched around and checked in to a bungalow on the river with a great view of the village from across water.

As we had already completed an amazing trek in northern Vietnam and were not that eager to sweat profusely and battle mud for several days, we set our hopes on finding a kayaking adventure. After having a bit of difficulty locating the tour operators we had heard existed in the village, we got the information we were looking for but at the price of an entire two weeks in Laos for two people! Crazy. This was another example of typical Laos thinking. Instead of running a trip for two people at a reasonable rate, it is preferable in the Laos mind to run no trip at all. Our attempts at negotiation and reason were met with a blank stare and confusing logic. You just had to laugh.

At any rate, we resolved to see if we could make the trip happen ourselves by putting up signs around town to help spread the cost among more travelers (unfortunately, this turned out to be unsuccessful). We also decided a good hike was in order to work off our energy so we set off down the muddy road (yeah, our resolve to avoid this situation lasted literally a few hours) with promises of caves, waterfalls and a village to be found. It was definitely a nice walk along the Mekong with views of the mountainous surroundings – very peaceful.

Eventually we did stumble upon a village where local kids, little puppies and various farm animals were skidding about the streets. Still no sign of cave or waterfall so we decided to keep on the path. After walking for quite some time and starting to lose hope, we met two friendly Laos youth coming the other way. We asked about the cave and waterfall and they vigorously nodded and agreed that we should continue in our direction. With renewed optimism we carried on…and on…and on with nothing discovered. As we turned back for home, we played back the scenario in our minds and realized that we had made the classic mistake of doing all of the talking and pointing, to which many people here who don’t understand what you’re saying seem to strongly agree with any question you might pose. “Is your hair on fire” would be met with a lot of head nodding and a loudly articulated “yes, yes!”.

We did find a great kitchen in town that served up some nice Laos food and naturally the delicious national beer. We tried great coconut curries and Lapp which is made with the meat of your choice and a combination of local herbs and citrus. Really tasty.




In the end, with our kayak advertisements doing little good and the tour operator confident in his business approach, we booked passage on the riverboat from Nong Khiaw going downstream to Luang Prabang. People make the journey here just for this boat ride, so it certainly wasn’t a terrible consolation.

About twenty tourists were crammed into the small wooden vessel to make the 6 – 7 hour journey, meaning that seating was improvised. We ended up with a fun group mostly from Europe and spent the time chatting about life and traveling when not distracted by the spectacular views.

It was a memorable start to our time in Laos.