If you’ve been thinking about traveling to lesser known, off-the-beaten-path destinations in central and southern Laos, you’ve probably heard of the Kong Lor Cave. Located in the heart of Laos, this spectacular cave is truly worth a visit off the typical tourist trail. It was one of my favorite places in all of Laos! Most people who visit do so while on a motorbike loop from nearby Thakhek. However, I visited this magical place in the heartland of Laos by public transport from the capital city, Vientiene. Read along for everything you need to know about getting to and from the Kong Lor Cave by bus, as well as tips on how to visit the cave, things to do in the village, and places to eat and sleep.
Feel free to read from the top or skip ahead to one of the following sections:
What is the Kong Lor Cave?
The Kong Lor Cave (or Tham Kong Lo) lies beneath a rocky limestone ridgeline, mountainous terrain which dominates this valley in central Laos. Through the base of one of these massive limestone karsts runs the Kong Lor River (or Nam Hin Bun). The river disappears into the mouth of the Kong Lor Cave and continues for 7.5 kilometers (about 4.5 miles) before exiting on the other side of the mountain, whereby the river continues along its tell-tale journey. Inside the cave, stacks of stalagmites and stalactites tower high to the ceiling which, in some parts, can be as high as 300 feet!
Where is the Kong Lor Cave Located?
The Kong Lor Cave is situated in the heart of Laos within the boundaries of the Phu Hin Bun National Park. The rural village here receives its namesake from the cave, simply called Kong Lor Village, with Thakhek being the closest city about 4 hours away.
Getting to Kong Lor Village
From the North (Vientiane)
Tour Company or Public Bus?
There are tour companies and accommodation providers in the major tourist hubs in northern Laos (Vientiane, Vang Vieng, Luang Prabang) that offer bus tickets to the Kong Lor Cave.
By far the easiest and cheapest way to visit is by traveling via public bus from Vientiane.
It is possible to buy tickets from the other destinations, but they are more expensive, further north than Vientiane, and will have to pass through the capital city anyway in order to reach Kong Lor. For this reason, it’s probably easiest to spend a night or two in Vientiane before heading south.
When I was looking around and comparing prices in Vientiane, I found that the tour companies were almost double charging (around 400,000 kip) for this one-way trip. Determined to find a better price, I opted to take a public bus from the capitol. Luckily, the southern bus station in Vientiane offers tickets directly to the Kong Lor Village for 180,000 kip.
You cannot buy tickets for this bus online; you just have to show up and buy them in person at the southern bus terminal. (However, if you prefer the comfort of having a ticket booked and a ride to pick you up at your accommodation, there are more expensive tickets available on 12go. These will still likely be cheaper than any you purchase at your accommodation provider or with a tour company.) Both of these options will have the bus drop you off on the road in Kong Lor Village near your accommodation.
Public Bus to Kong Lor via Southern Bus Terminal
This bus leaves daily at 10 am from Vientiane’s southern bus terminal.
To get there, you can either take a tuk tuk (more expensive) or take the route 29 city bus from the CBS/Talat Sao bus station in the downtown area, which costs 8000 kip. My hostel was located near the CBS bus station (as well as many other hostels in this part of Vientiane), so I was able to walk here on the morning of my trip. A tuk tuk from downtown or bus ride from the CBS station takes about 30 minutes.
Since the Kong Lor bus leaves at 10 am, you should plan to leave your accommodation well in advance on the morning of your trip. I left really early and did this intentionally because there wasn’t a lot of information online about departures and such. I didn’t know when the bus would leave from downtown or when it would arrive at the southern bus terminal, and I also wanted to make sure I had enough time to buy my ticket to Kong Lor and get some food before departing.
On the morning I went, I arrived at the CBS station for the 29 bus around 7:30 am. My bus left around 8 am and arrived at the southern bus terminal around 8:30 am. This left me with plenty of time to purchase my ticket and explore the huge food market that’s right next door, where you can eat a meal, buy some snacks for your trip or just walk around and see everything. Inside the bus terminal there is also a small store for snacks and drinks.
This trip takes about 8 hours, with many stops along the way to let passengers on or off, and a couple stops for bathroom and food breaks. My bus wasn’t the cleanest or newest, and it didn’t have A/C – but I had a window seat and was able to leave the window open the whole ride so the temperature was pleasant for me.
From the South (Thakhek)
Thakhek is the nearest city to Kong Lor and thus the easiest place from which to find direct transportation to Kong Lor. Songthaews (taxi trucks) leave from the bus station to Kong Lor every day at 7 am and 2 pm (however, these times are not very strict and more of a general guideline). The trip takes 4-5 hours. There are possibly also tour companies and accommodation providers in Thakhek that can arrange transportation for you, but these will likely be at a higher cost than buying at the bus terminal.
If you are coming from further south, like Pakse, than you will need to leave very early to make your connecting transfer at the Thakhek bus terminal. It is possible to do the journey from Pakse to Kong Lor in a day, but it will be a very long day. (I did it the opposite direction and it was about 14 hours total.) If you are taking a public bus, you’ll be able to find your connecting songthaew at the Thakhek bus terminal. Depending on when you arrive, you might be required to stay in Thakhek overnight if there are no more buses leaving to Kong Lor for the day.
Visiting the Kong Lor Cave
Directions to Phu Hin Bun National Park
From the village, you can walk to the end of the road in the opposite direction of where you arrived in town. The road ends at the national park and will bring you through a forest before you arrive at the entrance. The entrance has a building with some information, but inside is where you will purchase your ticket, which includes a guide, a boat, and a headlamp.
Entrance Fees for the Kong Lor Cave
The price per person is based on how many people are in your group. The max number of people on a boat toar is 3 people (not including your guide). With 2 or 3 people in your group, the cost per person is 200,000 kip ($10 USD) each. If you are going solo, the cost for the trip is 300,000 kip ($15 USD).
Since it is cheapest to do in a group, if you are coming alone like I did, I recommend showing up earlier in the day in case you can find a partner or two to split the cost with. I went in the early afternoon and everyone visiting the village had already gone and done the tour for the day, so I had to pay the full price to go alone. (It was still so worth it.)
What To Expect On The Tour
After you get your ticket, you will be assigned a guide, who will lead you down the stairs towards the river. You will then get in a longtail boat and travel to the opposite side of the river. Then, you will walk down a path for a few minutes until you reach the opening of the cave. (There is an impassable waterfall at the opening of the cave, which is why you must cross the river and then walk to the entrance at the start.) From there your guide will bring your boat along through the river canal that travels through the darkness of the Kong Lor Cave.
At various points your guide will stop to let you get out and walk around through the impressive cave formations, which light up as you walk along the paths, making for some unexpected and awe-inspiring scenes that you can’t see in the dark from your boat. The guide will take you 7.5 km all the way to the other side of the cave, where the river exits through an opening in the limestone wall, and from there you will travel a bit more upriver until you reach the halfway point. Here, you can get out to use the restroom or buy snacks and drinks. After a few minutes’ break here, the guide will bring you back downstream through the cave to where you originally started. The whole experience takes about 2 hours.
What to Bring
You don’t need to bring too much with you, but here are a few things I recommend:
- sandals or shoes with good grip that you don’t mind getting wet
- clothes that you don’t mind getting wet (from inside of the boat)
- water bottle
- phone and/or camera for taking pictures
- rain jacket (especially during the rainy season, but also any time of year as the inside of the cave is wet)
- sweater (I brought one in case the cave was chilly, but I didn’t end up needing it)
- money for your ticket and in case you want to buy a drink or snack at the halfway point
All About Kong Lor Village
Things to Do
The village is surrounded by jagged limestone mountains and the whole valley is filled with rice fields, animals, and wooden homes built on stilts. When I was there, they were just at the beginning of the rice planting season so all of the flooded rice paddies were full of foot-high, lime green grasses from the new plant growth. As is typical with most places around Laos, there are many farm animals and pets roaming around.
There is not a whole lot to do in Kong Lor Village except the cave. However, it is a truly stunning spot and I enjoyed staying for two nights.
Since I took a bus there from Vientiane, I only arrived around sunset on the first night, and the only way out of there without a motorbike is to leave around 6 am on a songthaew truck. So if you don’t have a motorbike you’ll have to stay two nights. The sunsets and sunrises are incredible though and the scenery is just breathtaking. In my free time I enjoyed lounging in my hammock and reading a book, or walking around to see the village and taking photos of the scenery. It is a very tranquil and relaxing place.
Where to Stay
There are a handful of guesthouses along this road in Kong Lor Village, all of which are within walking distance to the Kong Lor Cave. Some are listed on Booking.com, but not all of them are available online.
I stayed at Thongdam Guesthouse and I cannot recommend them enough. In all of my Southeast Asia travels, I have stayed in many rustic bungalows and this one wins the prize. The bungalows were extremely clean, with very cozy beds, windows, bug nets, a fan, a front and a back deck, and a hammock. I stayed in the “dorm” which had 5 single beds and two bathrooms as well as two decks on each side, but I had it all to myself when I was there. The private rooms are basically the same setup, just smaller. They have a restaurant and the food was pretty good and reasonably priced. While the family wasn’t totally fluent at speaking English, we were able to communicate well enough and the mother helped me to hail a songthaew on the morning that I left.
Staying in Kong Lor Village means you will face some mosquitoes (especially during the rainy season) and some power outages (which is common all over Laos). The accommodation options in Kong Lor come with bug nets and they have WiFi, except infrequently when the power goes out. In my experience over two nights, the electricity went out just for a few hours in the evening after rain and then came on before I went to bed.
Where to Eat
Most of the restaurants in Kong Lor Village are attached to guesthouses, so you can safely assume that any of the guesthouses in the area will have a restaurant. I personally enjoyed the food at Thangdam Guesthouse and at The Best One Restaurant.
Getting to Your Next Destination from Kong Lor Village
This is where the planning part of this journey gets tricky! While there are buses that you can purchase tickets for online and in person to get to Kong Lor, there is no such thing available to leave Kong Lor. There are no travel agencies or bus terminals in Kong Lor Village, and there is nothing available on 12go or anywhere else online. So!! How do you get the heck out of Kong Lor Village then?
Before I arrived in Kong Lor, I truly had no idea what my options were for leaving. I just figured I would show up and ask around to find out how to go southbound. This worked out fine, and it’ll be just as fine for you, too. All I did was talk to my host and ask her about getting to Pakse. I don’t speak any Lao and her English wasn’t very good either, but we were able to understand each other well enough.
Traveling Southbound (towards Thakhek)
Getting to Thakhek
There is a songthaew (a taxi pickup truck) that leaves the Kong Lor Village once daily at about 6 am. You will hear it coming – it blares the horn as it journeys down the road, notifying potential passengers of its coming departure from the village. In my case, my host flagged down the truck for me since she knew I needed help getting to my next destination.
This truck gets packed with locals along the way, traveling the long road out of the mountains towards route 13, the main highway which extends from Vientiane all the way down to Laos’ southern border with Cambodia. At the route 13 intersection, the songthaew stops in Vieng Kham to let passengers off, and then continues southbound to the Thakhek bus terminal.
This trip to the Thakhek bus terminal takes 4-5 hours and costs 170,000 kip. You can either take a connecting bus to elsewhere in southern Laos, like Pakse, or you can choose to stay a night or two in Thakhek.
Getting to Savannakhet or Pakse
From the Thakhek bus terminal, you can purchase bus tickets to elsewhere in Laos. I arrived at the bus terminal around 11 am and was able to hop on a bus immediately for Pakse, which took another 8 hours. The price for a bus to Pakse was 180,000 kip.
It’s worth noting that the bus timetables aren’t always accurate and sometimes the buses wait for more passengers before departing.
Traveling Northbound (towards Vientiane)
The beginning of this journey is the same as the one above – taking a songthaew from Kong Lor Village at around 6 am.
You will either continue all the way to Thakhek bus terminal for a transfer to Vientiane, or you will have to hop off at the intersection of route 12 and route 13 in Vieng Kham for your connecting transfer. Since I didn’t do this northbound trip, the best course of action would be to ask your accommodation provider about how to get to Vientiane from Kong Lor. They and your songthaew driver will help you get where you need to go.
Tips for Visiting the Kong Lor Cave (and Elsewhere in Laos)
PSA: Transportation in Southern Laos
The majority of tourists who come to Laos mostly stay in the tourist-centric and more developed areas of the north – notably Luang Prabang, Vang Vieng, and Vientiane. Once you get out of these areas, traveling around Laos may not be as comfortable or convenient as the Laos-China Railway or a nice coach bus you might expect to find in neighboring countries. It’s way more of an adventure, which is part of the fun, but it can also be confusing and stressful at times!
In my experience, traveling around the lesser-visited parts of Laos, the public transportation can be a less-than-ideal experience. The buses I found myself on were dirty, very old, and in poor condition (broken windshields, ripped seats, etc.). One of my buses even broke down! Southern Laos is pretty rough around the edges and traveling here isn’t exactly luxurious. But for me, this is part of the fun of traveling. Traveling like this is a great way to live like a local and it makes for great stories!
Be Wary of “VIP” & Overnight Buses!
On that note, use caution when spending extra money on “VIP” or sleeper buses. I heard many horror stories from other travelers I met and from online reviews of bus companies. Many of the complaints were about spending a premium (i.e. 450,000 kip) only to be put on old, filthy buses with no A/C. I even heard stories from solo travelers about getting paired with strangers on a bed in a sleeper bus.
To prevent this from happening, take time to look at the bus you will be getting on before you buy your ticket. This way you will be able to see what seat or bed you will occupy and what condition the bus is in and thus will be able to make an informed decision about whether or not to purchase a premium ticket.
Economic Volatility & The Laotian Kip
The Laotian Kip has been pretty volatile over the past few years due to the lasting impact from COVID and from the newly constructed Laos-China Railway which has put Laos in great debt to China. Only in 2019, $1 USD equated to about 8000 Kip. As of July 2024, the Kip equivalent to $1 USD has increased to roughly 22,000 Kip. That is a crazy decrease in value in such a short period!!!
I say this to inform any future visitors to Laos that the prices listed in this post may continue to change drastically over the next few years and to take them with a grain of salt. Obviously, when traveling to Laos, supporting locally-owned and family-run businesses will have a hugely positive impact on the locals.
Communicating in Laos
Here are two easy phrases to use when traveling in Laos: ‘Sabaidee‘ means ‘hello‘ and ‘kap chai‘ means ‘thank you.’
Unlike neighboring countries, much of the Laotian population does not speak fluent English (or any English), especially outside of the main tourist hubs. As a visitor, be prepared to not be able to communicate very well with the locals. Some can speak a little bit of English, but not many and usually only as it relates to their job.
Even with the language barrier, in other places in Southeast Asia people know how to communicate in other ways (like typing a price into a calculator), but in the more rural parts of Laos, because it’s so off the tourist trail, some locals may not think to do that. Just something to keep in mind in case you find yourself needing to communicate! A translator app can really come in handy.
Thanks for reading! Please let me know if you have any comments or questions below.
For further reading on travel in Southeast Asia:
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