We signed up for a tour to Pak Ou Caves and Kuang Si Waterfall through All Lao Travel, recommended in the Lonely Planet Guide. We wouldn’t necessarily recommend this company. Our boat got back from the caves over an hour late, so we missed our hour lunch break. We tried explaining to the lady in the tour office that we needed time to switch our luggage from one hotel to the next, but she wasn’t accommodating at all and kept saying that the minivan to the waterfall would leave in 10 minutes. There was another couple from our boat who wanted to grab some lunch, but the tour lady didn’t want to help them out either. Finally another lady in the office said we could go to our first hotel to get our luggage and then the mini van would pick us up at our new hotel.
The morning boat ride to Pak Ou Caves took about an hour and a half.
The boats can fit about 12 passengers, but they waited around for more people to show up for an extra hour and divided us up so that there were 6 passengers per boat. We were supposed to leave at 8am, but didn’t take off until 9am.
We stopped at Whiskey Village on the way to the caves and looked around a little while. Do you take your whiskey with a cobra?
There are two caves. The upper one is dark and doesn’t have much in it. The lower one has many Buddha statues.
We were both a little disappointed with the caves. I’d pictured something that looked more impressive from the river.