Loop-De-Loop

Tha Khaek is a small town in the centre of the country, and most notable as the recommended start of the loop, a three or four day motorbike trek through the inner countryside. The hostel we stayed at is the epicentre of the trip and where helpful Mr Ku has set up his motorbike hire next door. He gave us a hand-drawn map and a quick rundown on how to break up our time, and we felt reasonably confident. Having left ourselves adequate time we planned for four days and, with my mother’s voice in my head, we even got insurance.
The first stretch of the loop was through a short stretch of caves along a wide concreted highway. The first was the infamous Buddha cave. The story goes that a strange visitor to the area climbed up to the cave to eat the bats that lived there and found the cave full of hundreds of golden statues of Buddha. Sounds impressive, it’s not. The locals have made the business of a visit much easier, building a huge set of steps to the mouth of the cave, which we were invited to climb once I’d been manhandled into a sarong by an old woman. At the top we ducked our heads and entered the small cave.
We were surprised by what we saw. There were no dazzling beams of light reflecting from hundreds of golden Buddhas in a peaceful spiritual sanctuary but a dim dark place with clusters of small Buddhas in an alcove at the back. No photographs were allowed and we felt quite uncomfortable pretending to admire the display while a small hunched man counted the tourist money with glee. We left quickly, getting back on the dusty road, heading for the next cave.
The next cave wasn’t one the normal tourist track and as such we missed it several times. We eventually found in after a short walk through the undergrowth. We scrambled over the rocks for a while until two Israeli men appeared looking at the rocks with trepidation. I thought at first they had a fear of heights but it turned out to worse when they told us they’d lost their motorbike key here. We looked back at the large drop and gave them sympathetic looks. No chance.
The next stop was a very strange affair that finally convinced me I was not a cave-lover. It was the largest on our route and as we should’ve guessed quite disappointing. The concreted path was lit by fairy lights, exactly as Buddha would’ve wanted. Just like Christmas every day, wait....
We left the caves behind us and sped up the highway. Just as we were getting bored the road started to rise and a smile spread across Tim’s face. We climbed up into the mountains and were finally given a view of the staggering scenery we’d been waiting for. About 20 minutes later the smooth surface of the road deteriorated dramatically, an exact line where the materials had run out. This was the starting line of the next two days of bumping off-road biking that caused us both some serious pain.
We admired the landscape, both the beauty and devastation that had been caused by a huge dam bursting and flooding the area a few years before. At regular intervals there were ordered sets of temporary houses, hastily constructed to accommodate the homeless from the area. The water had caused lots of the trees to develop a two-tone effect, brown on the bottom and white above the line, making the whole landscape quite eerie. We arrived in Tha Lang, a small gathering of huts and houses, which was to be our stop for the night. Considering some of the stories we’d heard we were pleasantly surprised at the comfort provided at our simple guesthouse, hot water even.
We were eating dinner sometime later when the Israeli men we’d met earlier came bouncing into view. They joined us and regaled us with a tale of their first day that made Tim and I feel like seasoned adventurers in comparison. They’d failed to find their key and had had to get a local man to rip out the electronics on the bike so it could be kick-started. A strange decision it seemed when you considered the relatively short distance back to the hostel. It made sense when they revealed this wasn’t actually the first day of their Loop but the second. The first had resulted in two crashes and a requisite return to base, something they weren’t going to do again. It seemed this kind of behaviour was indicative of their style of travelling as they told us another story about trekking across the Alps with no sleeping bags. I liked them instantly but was in no hurry to join forces, our trip was going perfectly smoothly so far though the next section of road was going to be anything but.