Epic Travel → Asia & the South Pacific → Laos → Kong Lor Cave

Location: Northern Khammouane Province, Laos

Time Required: 3 hours (once you’re in the area); total detour from Route 13 is about 7 hours.

Red Tape/Notes: Open year round, but access is much more difficult in the wet season. Mosquitoes can be an issue near the river. Assume your feet (and other regions) will get wet; the boats are rather precarious and generally have some amount of water in the bottom; you also may need to stand/walk in shallow water during portages.

What’s Nearby?: Phou Hin Boun, Thakhek (closest major town)

Kong Lor (sometimes spelled Konglor or Kong Lo) is another great cave in the fabulous karst mountains of Laos and probably the best known cave in the Khammouane Province; it sees significantly more visitors than Xe Bang Fai River Cave, perhaps because access is much easier and substantial effort has been put into infrastructure at the cave. The road to the Kong Lor area passes through the mountains and includes great views of the surrounding karst in the Phou Hinboun National Park. There’s a viewpoint near the summit of the road that’s worth a stop to pause and drool over what wonders could be hiding in the mountains. Once down in the valley, there’s really only one relatively short section of rough road, and you can still navigate it without high clearance if you drive slowly. If you’re taking public transport from Vientiane, which seems to be a common choice, it’ll take you an entire day just to get here (leave on the 10am bus, arrive at around 5pm). Using private transport, like we did, meant a detour of perhaps two hours each way from the main road, and we spent around three hours in the park, so it’s doable as a day trip depending on where you’re based. There are some good options near the cave for food – as mentioned, it’s been developed for tourists. The place we stopped even had pizza on the menu (we didn’t try it…but the fact that it was offered is a pretty serious indication of tourists). There are also various lodging options, and I thought the Hinboun area was so pretty that while you could theoretically do it in a day, I’d recommend staying the night nearby.

The cave is 7km long and you’ll be transported in these awesome little powered “speed canoes” – the boat driver will have to portage the boat over a couple of small rapids, but otherwise it’s a pretty straightforward ride, whipping through the cave at high speed (the cave is massive, by the way – you’ll need a good headlamp to actually see anything), passing through large openings into massive caverns with ceilings over 300 feet high. There’s really only one significant portion where you can see nice formations (it’s an elevated area high enough to avoid being ravaged by water during the rainy season) and it’s been developed significantly to allow easy viewing for tourists, with a walkway and lots of lighting – definitely worth stopping to check out. Once you emerge on the far side of the cave, you can travel up river a short distance (watch for water buffalo on the way and enjoy the surrounding scenery) to where a rest area has been set up with some picnic tables and shops where you can buy souvenirs and snacks. You can also hike from this area to a nearby village – or do other hikes through the park, one of which goes over the mountain you just passed under. We spent all of our time at the rest area watching a baby monkey play with a puppy. Not surprisingly the puppy always won (signified by the monkey squeaking), but the monkey would only pout momentarily before initiating another ill-fated round. It was better than television. If you’re pressed for time you can of course skip the rest area (the monkey/puppy situation was the only thing that made it worthwhile for us); I wouldn’t recommend skipping the walk through the formations, though.

Epic Travel → Asia & the South Pacific → Laos → Kong Lor Cave