Thakhaek Loop

Our next stop after Vientiane was a small town called Thakhaek, whose claim to fame is its proximity to the Kong Lo Caves.

We had originally just planned to spend two nights there to see the caves and move on. But somewhere along the way (and I can no longer remember how) we learned that instead of just going directly to the caves and back, there was a very popular alternative: a 4 day motorcycle loop that would include the caves as well as other waterfalls.

Phosy Thalang Guesthouse

This sounded awesome to us, so the next day, we headed to a nearby motorcycle rental shop: Mad Monkey Motorbikes. 

It's run by a German man and his Lao wife and their trip advisor reviews are all over the map. But we didn’t know this at the time, as we rented without googling first. Our experience was good, but I can understand why people may not have been happy. Here are a few things that will help you decide if it's worth going with Mad Monkey...

Childcraft Bucket List: Lascaux Caves

As a child, there was nothing I loved more than sprawling on the living room floor with a volume of the World Book Childcraft Children's Encyclopedia. There were books on every topic that could possibly capture a child's imagination: world and space, fairy tales from all over the world, the human body and how things work. But my favorite volume of them all was "Mysteries and Fantasies".

That book was my first introduction to such places as Stonehenge, Easter Island and the Nazca Lines. The fact that we still didn't know why or how our ancestors built many of these structures was absolutely fascinating to me. I have an entire bucket list devoted to all the places I had read about in Childcraft and hope to visit one day. This June, I was super excited to be able to visit one of them: The Lascaux Caves.

I knew going in, that the original caves had been closed to visitors years ago, and that we would be looking at replicas. So my expectations were suitably lowered. However, I was pleasantly surprised by the quality and beauty of the replicas. A lot of effort had been taken to match the originals. They even used the same materials and techniques that we believe our ancestors used!

So I was somewhat surprised to find myself walking out of the caves still feeling disappointed and very dissatisfied with my experience. If this was the only cave we had visited in the region, I would have been quite disillusioned. Fortunately, earlier in the day, we visited another prehistoric cave that was everything that I had hoped our Lascaux experience would be, but wasn't: Font de Gaume

Along the trail to the entrance of Font de Gaume