Sooksomboon Guest House Muang Khammouan

... various towns and small settlements, elaborate temples, swamps, rice fields with people working on them (wearing their chraracteristic straw hats), and after 3 p.m. as always loads of kids in school uniforms, returning home after school.

Thakhek seems like a bleak and widespread town. There are not a lot of people out on the streets and most of its ...

Wir sind noch einen ganzen Tag in Savannakhet geblieben und haben die Ruhe und das gemuehtliche laotische Leben genossen. Heute sind wir dann in einem kleinen Bus voller Laoten (Platz hatte es fuer 13, aber es waren sicher 18 Leute drin) nach Tha Kaek gefahren. Auch diese Stadt liegt direkt am Mekong und auf der anderen Seite ist immer noch Thailand.

Tha Kaek ist sehr ...

... be beautiful. Unfortunately the road was only dirt and as it had been raining it had turned into mud. We tried to go down but only got about 300 meters before my bike slipped and then I slipped and I ended up burning my calf on the muffler. I have to say it didn't look very good, a bit chard and white, so I quickly did a bit of first aid and we turned our bikes around to try a different place. We stopped at Xiang Liab Cave, but this was completely ...

... of rice (two sweet coconut types), several types of dried and cured meats, a bean dish and chili sauce all served on banana leaves - yummy! a veritable feast! This was cooked by the back-marker Mr Mee who up till now had been very quiet, but now used his catch-phrase "eat eat eat" whenever one of us looked to be slowing down so we were quite stuffed by the end! Then pudding - cake in a packet quite randomly! The last cave had a river running through it which can ...

... exciting than it sounds. It is a sandstone wall about 80 meters high which formed a natural fortification but looks like giant bricks put together. Apparently there was some debate as to whether it was a stonehenge type thing - but it is clearly natural when you look at it! then we tried some street stall food. Some nice looking barbecued fish on a stick. We asked for it to be heated up as had been pre-cooked. It arrived tepid! Clearly the worst possible condition ...

We waved goodbye to the capital of Laos and its delicious pain au chocolates and wound our way south for Tha Khaek. We took a gamble on another local bus (saving ourselves 2/3 of the price wanted in town) and fortunately the gamble paid off as the journey was really good (Heli retained her lunch this time!). We experienced the in-transit cuisine, as every time we stopped at least 10 people got on the bus and waived various "lunch options", most of which it was hard to tell from ...

So we left the capital and headed to the cave of Kong Lo Stuff to add: Journey to Khun Khum Beers at touruist info waterfall trek tuk tuk to Tham lo, rice noodles eggs naail polishg. Hoimesaty in village, washing in river Kong Lo cave Tuk tuk to Tha khaek, 19 locals, 10 chickens, 6 ducks rice and us 4 hours

... behind me puked all over my feet. Once we arrived the biggest thunderstorm I've ever seen began. The incredible clap of thunder made me jump a good few metres into the air and the rain outdid the Goan monsoon we got stuck in by miles. We tried very hard to find something to do, but to no avail, so we spent a night getting excited about the bus to Vientiane.

... over 229 small buddha statues some of which dated back to over 600 years ago! From there we took in another cave, guided by local kids even though it was nice most caves are pretty similar, large, dark and chilly and this was no exception. The kids then joined us to Tha Falang, a great place to swim in cool waters beneath tall limestone karsts, well need after climbing to see the Buddha cave, these religous people certainly did things the hard way! We had to ...