The Thakhek Loop: Day 1 - Thakhek to Nakai

After renting our motorbikes from a friendly Laos family and their massive bear-like dog who tried to have its way with me, we set out on the open road to begin our adventure on the 4 day Thakhek loop. The loop covers some 450+ kilometres of Laos southern and central scenery including vast limestone landscapes, gravel tracks and remote villages with friendly Laos families and children waving and shouting 'Sabaidee!'

The road from Thakhek to Nakai is a smooth asphalt road stretching some 120 km from which there are paths to many different caves and geographical sites. On the way we visited the Buddha cave in which was a shrine of Buddhas and incense which was pretty cool. After that we hit up Xang Lieb where a local Laos family guided us in and around the cave. It was a stupidly hot day so at the first sign of water in the cave I was straight in. It was certainly a surreal moment swimming within the darkest depths of this cave, the squeaking sounds of bats mere metres above me. I thought of Ace Ventura and avoided stepping on anything that looked like guano. From there we drove down some dirt tracks to Tha Falang which was a decent sized river we could swim in for yet another cool down. Next stop was another cave we could scale through where you could see a body of body illuminated by the skylight piercing through a hole the above cave ceiling, this was pretty spectacular.

It was about 4:15pm at this point and we still had some decent distance to cover before sunset and before our scheduled overnight stay. Our roughly drawn map seemed to indicate that our guest house wasn't that far however it was much further than planned. At full throttle I was racing the sun as it descended into the mountains, driving down some ridiculously loose and gravelly roads. As the sun disappeared, so did my will to keep driving. Somewhere along the way our group became separated so we gave up hopes of finding our scheduled guest house and instead bailed into this surprisingly awesome guesthouse near by called something something Phosy (?), a cosy set of blue and purple bungalow huts along the riverside. Honestly, hot chocolate and hot food meet tasted as nice after a long day driving in death defying conditions. It was probably the best food and drink I've had in since traveling. It probably wasn't actually but after the day of driving we had, it was like ambrosia from the heavens. Day one completed (only just), and thankful to be alive, sleep quickly overcame me.

Weather: hot as hell, sunburn pretty decent.

Roads: Fair to undesirable, pretty sketchy at times

Scenery: spectacular.

Notable moment: spinning out on gravel roads in the dark, wondering if I'm happy with all I've accomplished in life.

Day one: Tick