DAY 21: Thakhek Loop (17/03/19)
⚠️This story is just a summary but it is going to be a long one!
Going all the way to the South of Laos there is a 3day loop driving with the motorbike🛵. The scenery is gorgeous and the trail is packed with caves and limestone cliffs.
The highlight of the loop is the Konglor Cave🏞️, referred to as one of the Asian wonders. It is 7km deep and filled with water so you need to ride a boat to visit the inside🚣♂️.
I started the ride very excited and amazed by the beautiful sights, little did I know that some awful things were about to happen😣
During the first day, after I have visited a couple of caves, I stopped for lunch in a waterfall area. The waterfalls were dry, but there were some pits full of water in which you could swim. At some point, a group of locals who carried huge speakers showed up.
They invited me to join them and gave me food and snacks. Then, the males started climbing a cliff and jumping from the top. They invited me to do the same, and I had the brightest idea to record the jump with my GoPro. I was not using that much, so I thought it would be a good time. It was not! It was not properly fixed and when I hit the water it was the last time I saw it🤦♂️
We tried diving but it was too deep and too blurry to see anything. Also, it was getting dark and I had to keep moving, so I decided that instead of completing the loop, the last day I would return the same way, I would buy a diving mask and I would find my GoPro📷.
By night, I arrived at a hostel near a damp. The dead trees raising from within the waters all around that area had a mystic but creepy vibe at the same time. That night we had an amazing barbeque and I met some people to ride along the next day. We visited some more caves and stopped for lunch in a natural pool. One more time, young locals showed up, and by this time I was starting to think that jumping from heights was their traditional hobby, because as if they were monkeys, they climbed a very hight thin tree 🌴🐒 and started to show off in front of the girls.
I would have stayed longer to enjoy the spectacle, but if I wanted to make it in time to visit the Konglor Cave that day and try finding my camera the next day I had to rush!!
I jumped in my bike and drove as fast as I could, as someone just warned me the cave was closing soon. One of the last sections of the road was a straight line, a good road, no cars, so I sped up to 90km/h. I was going to make it!
Probably that thought distracted me and I couldn’t see it, a big pothole appeared in the middle of the road. By the time I wanted to react it was too late. I knew I couldn’t dodge it, so I braked and held into my bike as strong as I could. It didn’t work.
Life got slow-mo and I flew like Superman. That could have been it, but it was not my time. I was wearing helmet, long pants and hard shoes, that protected me and I only ended up with some nasty scratches and a little stone stuck deep into my arm. The bike was not doing much better than me but it was still working. I patched myself and kept driving. I couldn’t let that accident be for nothing.
The rest of the drive I still had to go fast, but way more careful as the road quality was getting worse, full of bumps and holes. When I finally made it to the caves, they were closing already. But I may or may have not given them some scary looks and they made an exception and let me go in. In the end, everything was worth it!!
That night I should have probably gone to a nice guesthouse. Have a good clean if my wounds, a nice bed and rest well. But I don’t follow the common sense. I decided to go for a Homestay, that means go spend the night in a house with a local family, not much electricity, shower with a bucket and a mat on the floor with a mosquito net around it👌🏻
The kids of the family were a bit shocked when they saw all my injuries. Probably they told all their friends, as the next morning all the kids in the town were outside the house trying to have a glimpse of me. The family also helped me to fix my bike a bit, although, by its looks, I already knew I would have to pay a lot of fees when I returned it.
On the way back, I had to stop in more than 10 villages to finally find a diving mask. And when I found one, the owners probably didn’t even know what it was for, but they knew it was expensive and they wanted to make some money. After a long negotiation, I still paid more than what I should have paid but I was committed to finding my GoPro.
I arrived at the waterfall area, put my mask on, removed my bloody bandages, and risking getting infected with the dirty waters I spent more than 1hour diving in. But the pit was too deep and too blurry to see anything. That was my first lesson of detachment, just let go, the camera was not of vital importance anyway. Maybe these 3 days were just packed with lessons I had to learn, and now the only thing left to do was to keep traveling…🤩