Tha Khaek

With a population of 70,000, Tha Khaek is nothin' much to write home about. We thought we'd write a little anyways... The city was constructed in 1911 and definitely not renovated since. While enjoying a fresh meal of fish at the night market, we viewed the best sunset yet on the Mekong River.

We used Tha Khaek as a stopover to visit Tham Pha Pa cave, which was discovered recently by a villager hunting for bats. We arrived via tuk tuk and rented sins, Lao style skirts, much like a sarong to enter the cave temple. We climbed a staircase and ducked barefoot into the edifice which opened up to 229 bronze Buddha images which have been there for over 600 years. Inside, we each hit the gong three times and sat for a few minutes contemplating life in the presence of the ancient Buddhas.

Judging by the length of this post, we're sure you'll agree that there wasn't in fact much to write home about.

Our White Elephant

A white elephant is something that a person owns whose upkeep is out of proportion to its value. We have a white elephant... and that item is our obsession with seeing elephants in SE Asia. Our quest to see elephants has become expensive and time consuming and we have yet to succeed.

The Lonely Planet said to get off at km 79 on the highway to reach Ban Na which would take us to an elephant observation tower over looking a salt lick. As we approached marker 77 on our tuk tuk it started to downpour. Within seconds we were soaked tossing our luggage into the nearest "restaurant", a family home where woman were sitting on straw mats weaving sticky rice baskets and men were drinking Lao Lao (rice whiskey). Hiding from the rain we had no choice but to pull our our box of wine, ipod and mini speakers. This roused laughter from our hosts. The two children collected beer caps for us to play a round of checkers on the checker table. After the showers subsided we each boarded a moped, luggage in hand, to Ban Na.

Ban Na consists of one road lined with roughly ten houses and one tourism agency. We purchased a guide to take us 4 km trek to the elephant observation tower and a home stay in town.  2km in to our flooded trek, our guide began to explain that "elephants do not like rain and they only come around, if at all, around 7, 8, or 9pm". Great...it was only 4:00pm and still raining. While we saw an elephant footprint in the mud, we returned slightly disappointed, poorer and still on the hunt to see these infamous creatures. Our evening consisted of rounds of Lao Lao with the locals and three French girls taking turns singing national songs. We came up with "100 bottles of Lao Lao on the wall"! Spirits still high we awoke early to catch a bus heading south to Tha Khaek. We would continue to finance our white elephant: elephant obsession.