Laos and Vietnam Karst Reconnaissance

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Laos and Vietnam Karst Reconnaissance

Postby DirtDoc » Nov 24, 2011 1:39 am

NOTE: March 17, 2012. WE ARE BACK HOME IN DENVER AND HAVE CLEANED UP MOST OF THESE POSTS, ADDED IMAGES, AND HAVE SCHEDULED A RETURN TRIP WITH A GROUP OF CAVERS AND KARST SCIENTISTS FOR THE OCT 25 - NOV 14, 2012 TIME FRAME. (Dates still approximate and may shift a day or two either way, depending on the schedule of those on the trip). IF YOU ARE INTERESTED IN JOINING US, PLEASE CONTACT ME FAIRLY SOON AT DirtDoc@Comcast.net FOR ITINERARY AND COSTS. THE TRIP IS MORE THAN HALF-FILLED BUT WE STILL HAVE A FEW SPOTS LEFT. NOTE THAT THIS IS NOT A CAVING EXPEDITION AS SUCH, BUT A TOURIST TRIP LIKE AN EXTENDED NSS CONVENTION GEOLOGY TRIP. WE WILL SEE A LOT OF SPECTACULAR KARST AND GET INTO QUITE A FEW CAVES, BUT AS TOURISTS, NOT EXPEDITION CAVERS.

Our two weeks in Laos would not have been nearly as enjoyable or productive without the invaluable aid of Terry Bolger and Phaythoune Somphilavong (Noi). Terry is a caving friend from the 1980's when I was living in Carlsbad, NM, and Terry was finishing his PhD in Lubbock, TX. He was very involved with caving in North America - especially the Guadalupes (heyday of Lechuguilla), West Texas, and Mexico. Since then Terry has spent his professional career in Australia, caving there and in SE Asia. He has been living, working, and caving in Laos for the last four years. Terry and Noi met us with a four-wheel drive truck which gave us access to the Laotian cave country. Noi's ability to converse with the local population cut through otherwise impenetrable confusion and provided a wonderful bridge to Lao customs. I am enormously grateful to them both for being able to spend the time with us.

To return to Cave Chat point where you enlarged the image, click on your back arrow and give your browser a moment to recover your place.

Original Post:

November 17, 2011, Thursday

I will try to post updates on our beating around in the karst of Laos and Vietnam. This is a general reconnaissance trip to get a feel for travelling in Laos and Vietnam, and to understand the realities of touring here with a group of cavers, karstologists and similar travellers.

After being awake for 50 hours we have come to rest in Luang Prabang, Laos. I don't sleep well on airplanes, and probably got 4 hours sleep in catnaps. No karst within sight of town, but a wonderful relaxing atmosphere with friendly and helpful people. A flavour of old French colonial Indochina on the Mekong River. Nice!

Dirtdoc

Temple in Luang Prabang
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Breakfast on the Mekong
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Villa Champa, our room has the front corner balcony
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Morning ritual as seen from our balcony
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Map of Laos showing the major ethnic groups
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Ethnic Hmoung dress
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Re: Laos and Vietnam Karst Reconnaissance

Postby DirtDoc » Nov 24, 2011 3:24 am

2 - Laos and Vietnam Karst Reconnaissance

November 18, 2011 Friday

Stirred awake from sound sleep about 4 AM by the slow beat of drums about a block away. Learned later that this was from the closest of several Buddhist Temples in Luang Prabang. Today is some sort of special day for them.

Shortly after dawn the parade of monks began below our balcony window as they went on their alms rounds. This provides the lay people with the opportunity to practice generosity by offering food, which in turn provides the monks with their sustenance for the day.

Most Lowland Lao are Theravada Buddhists and are a notably gentle, quiet, and polite people. Although the ultimate goal is nibbana (Sanscrit: nirvana), most Lao Buddhists seek a practical goal of rebirth in a better existence. By feeding monks, giving donations to temples, and performing regular worship at the local wat, Lao Buddhists acquire enough 'merit' for their future lives.

We hired a boat and went north up the Mekong River for a couple of hours into the beginning of spectacular cone karst similar to that along the Li River south of Guilin, SW China. The caves we managed to get into were not very much, but interesting. They appear to have formed as typical foot caves in the karst towers, now high and dry as the Mekong down cut, and have been enshrined with many Buddha's. There are two Buddha Caves. The lower one is little more than a remnant shelter cave with many statues. It has the better view from the cave, across the Mekong to the neighbouring karst hills. The upper one goes farther into the hill and it is useful to have a light to avoid stumbling around. The journey itself up the river was worth the trip.

On the way, we stopped at a small village where many women were weavers and bought some shawls for take-home presents. Monks in the local monastery were hard at work, sawing logs.

We REALLY like Luang Prabang. The people are polite, helpful, and soft-spoken. A good location to recover from jet lag. It is a relaxing, comfortable, and not a fast-paced place!

We crossed a temporary bamboo foot bridge across the Mekong to a truly fine restaurant: Deyn Sabai. A little more upscale than many in town, but definitely recommended for a nice and memorable dinner.

Dirtdoc

Loom at a small village on the Mekong, north of Luang Prabang, near Pak Ou Buddha Caves
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Monks (some, anyhow) at work in the same small village sawing logs.
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Karst appearing in the distance. Approximately 500 m of relief.
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Closer karst from the lower Pak Oh cave.
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Lower Pak Oh Cave
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Bamboo bridge (ALMOST completed) across the Mekong to the Deyn Sabai Restaurant.
An adventurous walk at night, without a light (DUH!), and with missing bamboo cross-members as it was still not quite finished.
This image was taken the next day when they were completing it.
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Re: Laos and Vietnam Karst Reconnaissance

Postby DirtDoc » Nov 24, 2011 3:44 am

3 - Laos-Vietnam Karst Reconnaissance

Luang Prabang to Vang Vieng

The road is very bad and winds up the spine of rugged clastic mountains. It's tropical forest, except where very steep slopes have been cleared to plant upland rice (does not grow in patties). Probably about 1.5 to nearly 2 m of rain a year, but with a 5 month dry season when it rarely rains. We have had excellent sunny weather so far, except from mid-morning on when it becomes very hazy.

We were stopped for about an hour while road crews cleared landslide debris from the road.

Descending back down to Kasi we entered monstrous karst. The lower hills near the valley look a lot like the cone karst between Yangshuo and Guilin, SW China, but the hills behind them are karst of an entirely different scale. Just HUGE!! Local relief is on the order of 1000 to 1300 m. It was too hazy and the road too bumpy to get any good images of the limestone mountain north of Kasi.

I don't know how you would get up on top. There does not appear to be any roads and essentially no trails. I'm told that no one lives up there - soils are thin, no water (since it runs immediately underground). If you did manage to get up there, I expect it would be awfully slow going to get anywhere around what appear to be huge limestone blades of large scale, high relief karren.

We had planned to visit a newly-opened developed cave just north of Kasi, but it turned out that it was not quite opened. The decision was made to spend the time elsewhere. Instead of getting off the minibus at Kasi, we went on to Vang Vieng.

South of Kasi, the road gets REALLY bad! There is another large block of huge karst west of the highway, but in Vang Vieng we are again nestled close beneath monstrous karst cliffs. I continue to be astounded by at the scale of the karst ~ the sheer SIZE of the cliffs and total relief! Local relief on the order of 1200 m.

We arrived in Vang Vieng where we met Terry and Noi (and the four-wheel drive truck). We were in time to sit on the veranda overlooking the Mekong, sipping libations, and watching the sun set across the karst hills on the west side of the river.

Dirtdoc

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Road up clastic mountains. Waiting for road crews to clear landslide debris.
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View from mountain pass between Luang Prabang and Kasi.
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At the bus station in Vang Vieng. Karst in the background.
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Arrival at our river front hotel in Vang Vieng. Karst hills across the river to the west.
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The end of the day - Vang Vieng
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Re: Laos and Vietnam Karst Reconnaissance

Postby DirtDoc » Nov 24, 2011 4:44 am

4 - Laos-Vietnam Karst Reconnaissance

Vang Vieng

A great day! A stunning location! Rewarding sun rise!

We spent a day in a 4-WD truck wandering around in the karst, fording streams and negotiating mostly dried-up buffalo wallows. But so far, the caves near Vang Vieng that we got into, in truly world-class karst - are interesting but not of similar stature to the karst itself.

Lao standards for a "developed" cave are rather minimal and there are quite a number of caves that are "developed". More are "opened" every year. That mostly means you pay 10,000 Kip (about USD $1.50) for entry and you have the run of the place. You can rent a "guide" for a bit more (often a teen-age girl, but occasionally a young man who is very knowledgeable about his cave), and a headlamp if you don't have your own. Many of the caves around Vang Vieng are over visited. There are usually no formal paths or controls once you are inside. Most are being tracked up and trashed by casual visitation. Most are "operated" by local villages. There needs to be some education of the responsible parties who do not realize that those parts of "their" cave that are most attractive to tourists are gradually being destroyed by visitors. The resource is not renewable. Cave temperatures are about 24 degrees C. In many you are likely to wade through water.

Most of the caves we got into are fairly close to base level and are not especially scenic. Either they are seasonally flushed with a vengeance in the wet season or they are dry with dusty speleothems. There are complex small caves similar to the "foot caves" in SW China and some BIG conduits, often floored with large cobbles and occasionally nice gours and cave pearls. There must be some higher pieces of old trunk passage in those hills that contain wet and scenic formations.

I did not try to take pictures in the dark portions of caves that did not have electric lights. I was not really equipped for it and was more interested in getting a feel for more caves rather than devoting time to cave photography in one.

The French cavers have been exploring for years in Laos, and I'm trying to find out more about what they have found. Most of their efforts have been in the east, along the Vietnam border where huge river caves are known to exist. That's the way we are headed.

We sat by the river tonight and watched the sun again set beautifully behind the karst mountains, and saw multiple clouds of bats come out of some cave off to the west of where we were sitting. They were fanning out in both directions along the river.

Dirtdoc

View from our hotel room in Vang Vieng
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Sunrise
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Footbridge across the Mekong to Tham Jang (Jang Cave)
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Resurgence from Tham Jang. The entrance is on the hillside above.
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Inside Tham Jang. As with most Asian caves, colored lights enhance the experience for visitors. There is a pathway inside the cave, but no controls or suggestions to discourage visitors from wandering off the trail.
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Dwight and Terry plotting the days adventures.
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Karst hills on the way to several caves.
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A limestone hill containing acessable foot caves on the way to Poukham Cave.
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Sign to Pha Daeng Jin Naly Cave. It appears to be made out of a flattened oil drum.
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The road to Poukham Cave a month after the rains stopped.
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Sign at Poukham Cave, where you pay fees.
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Poukham Cave - entrance chamber.
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Poukham Cave - shrine in entrance room.
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Poukham Cave - local family and reclining Buddha.
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Poukham Cave - the way to the back parts of the cave. You need a light to get to some pretty formations, and a rope to climb down to the river level.
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Poukham Cave - the resurgance is a GREAT swimming hole!
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Karst on the road to Nang Phom Hom Cave. This translates "Cave of the Girl with Perfumed Hair" an old Lao folk story. It is a complex small cave with an active stream, again in a beautiful setting.
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River karst north of Vang Vieng
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Road to Tham Nan Xang Cave.
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Two caves, Tham Hoi (Snail Cave) and Tham Nan Xang (Water Cave) form a single system that is separated by a siphon. The villagers have rigged a rope along the ceiling of Tham Nan Xang and will rent you inner tubes. You can pull yourself quite some distance inside. Tham Hoi, the upper dry entrance to the system, leads to several kilometers of active stream passage after 800m.
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Re: Laos and Vietnam Karst Reconnaissance

Postby DirtDoc » Nov 24, 2011 4:45 am

5 - Laos-Vietnam Karst Reconnaissance

Vientiane

No karst here in the capital of Laos. We finding out what we need to know and do to bring a group of tourists here.

With luck we will be headed east to the great karst and river caves of the Khammuan tomorrow. It may be early December before we surface at Phang Nha in Vietnam. Enjoy your Thanksgiving!

DirtDoc
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Re: Laos and Vietnam Karst Reconnaissance

Postby DirtDoc » Nov 27, 2011 10:02 am

6 - Laos-Vietnam Karst Reconnaissance

Hinboun Valley

I think it is Nov 25, Friday, here in Laos. And pardon my typing, the keyboard is funny here, and there is no spell check.

A few people travelling light and not attracting official attention can easily get into a lot of caves in Laos. BUT you need to know in advance where it is safe to do so. Safe from unexploded ordnance, safe from armed guerrillas who still exist in certain areas, and especially safe from government oversight (which is mostly focused on the first two, but not always). Much of the karst is also in areas designate as Protected Areas which have their own rules and regulations.

Bringing a group in on tourist visas is another story. We are trying to figure it out as it involves multiple layers of officialdom and parallel agencies. It seems to start with your needing to have an official Lao Guide and gets more complicated from there.

ANYWAY this is incredible karst. I thought I knew what to expect before we got here, but the reality was simply beyond my imagination. (DUH!!!). And I know a lot about karst and have a very good imagination.

East from Vientaine on a road that I would previously have thought as bad. After driving south from Luang Prabang to Vang Vieng, it seemed smooth as silk.

A cave reference document is Michael Laumanns 2-volume work: ATLAS OF THE GREAT CAVES AND KARST OF SOUTHEAST ASIA. Emily at Speleobooks has copies.

Into the Hinboun Valley. Hinboun translates as "Limestone" - which is surrounded by more incredible karst. The cliffs are vertical and look small. They are shear sided, solution etched, and 450-500 meters tall. Now the Guadalupes look small to me.

Great river caves issue from the base of the cliffs. They head in the clastic rocks to the east. When the rivers hit the limestone, they go underground and emerge on the west side of the karst. The larger cave rivers travel significant distances underground. In the wet season they really flush and the past rainy season was unusually wet. The rain stopped this year on October 16. A very few showers since but the water levels are still higher than normal.

Today we hired a boat and went 7.5 km through Tham Kong Lor, emerging on the upstream side into an otherwise nearly inaccessible karst valley. The locals have used the cave river for access for many years, transporting agricultural products to market. One foreigner who has been through the cave a number of times told the story of seeing, while going upriver in the middle of the cave, a small wooden long-tail boat going downstream with a live, fully-grown water buffalo tied into it. One good reference is Tony Waltham's GREAT CAVES OF THE WORLD, page 70. Tony calls the cave "Tham Hinboun". Laumanns refers to it as Tham Kong Lo. French cavers have mapped 12.4 km of passsage.

A short distance into the cave there is a higher side passage above the river level. Electricity has been run this far into the cave to show off the formations. The guides let you disembark, walk up through the lighted section, and then climb down into your boat farther upstream. This is an excellent Tourist Cave by Lao standards.

After emerging on the upstream side into the closed karst valley, you can walk to a village that I was told was near an American site during the war - perhaps Lima Site 237.

Onward, through the Dark.

DirtDoc


Entering the northwestern end of the Hinboun Valley. View south across the incredibly rugged "Limestone Forest". The black surface coloration is probably due to blue-green algae that live on the surface crust of the limestone.
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Northwest end of the Hinboun Valley. Clastic rocks (mostly sandstones and siltstones) that cap the higher ridge tops are stratigraphically over the solubule limestone which forms the gray karst outcrops near the road.
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Hinboun Valley karst
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Tham Kong Lor - view of the downstream entrance from the large "lake" scoured by the river during high-water discharge.
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Tham Kong Lor - long-tail wooden boats in the pool at the entrance.
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Tham Kong Lor downstream entrance from inside.
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Tham Kong Lor - boatride inside the cave - 7.5 km. You should take a GOOD light. The passage AVERAGES 40x40 m in cross section.
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The next two images are of the electrically-lighted formation area above the river.
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Re: Laos and Vietnam Karst Reconnaissance

Postby DirtDoc » Nov 28, 2011 9:07 am

7 - Laos-Vietnam Karst Reconnaissance

Saturday Nov 26

In the morning had a fascinating tour of a major dam site with a Swedish civil engineer. Briefly: the new reservoir has raised the water level 35 meters against limestone karst highlands. On the OTHER side of the karst are a series of caves with streams flowing out of them. These outflows existed before the reservoir was created. Will it leak?? We now have a bit more head (35 m). It is quite an interesting situation.

Afternoon back down the Hinboun River valley and stayed at the "speleocamp" that Claud Mouret and the French cavers have been using as their base camp for many years. Cave maps and topos are mounted on the walls of the dining room.

Went into Tham Nam Non, a huge cave that also goes through the mountain. Entered the big downstream entrance (see Laumanns - the reference I posted earlier). The main passage is 50-70 meters wide and up to 150 m tall. Not much in the way of formations along the main river passage, but certainly a rather big hole. The clastic boulders on the floor testify that the drainage comes clear through the mountain. You can walk back about 3 km to a sump that comes out into Tham Song Dang, the upstream segment of the cave system. According to Laumanns it is about 6.7 km all the way through the cave (including the sump, which the French have dived). 2 km upstream from the Tham Nam Non entrance it is possible to climb up into older, abandoned passages that are nicely decorated.

This is the longest cave so far mapped in Laos with more than 31 km of passages. Exploration continues. A good description of the explorations was published by Claude Mouret and others in French in 2009: Spelunca, 116, p. 27-39, but the map is incomplete showing only 22.13 km of passage.

The scale of the surface karst is large -- the cliffs above the valley floor rise roughly 450-500 m.

DirtDoc


Nam Gnouang Reservoir. Recently completed, it has raised the water against the karst ridge in the background by about 35 m. A series of small caves with streams flowing out of them occur on the other side of the limestone ridge at a lower elevation than the reservoir.
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Karst escarpment near Tham Nam Non.
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Resurgance entrance to Tham Nam Non, the longest known cave in Laos with over 31 km of surveyed passasges.
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Dwight caving (Lao style) in Nam Non. You don't have to worry about bumping your head in this cave.
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Re: Laos and Vietnam Karst Reconnaissance

Postby DirtDoc » Nov 28, 2011 9:08 am

8- Laos-Vietnam Karst Reconnaissance

We are presently in Tha Khaek, Laos looking at Nakhon Phanom, Thailand across the Mekong. We are headed into the remote karst of eastern Khammuon and will surface in Vietnam.

DirtDoc
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Re: Laos and Vietnam Karst Reconnaissance

Postby DirtDoc » Nov 28, 2011 9:11 am

This post moved by DirtDoc to place it in the proper sequence.
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Re: Laos and Vietnam Karst Reconnaissance

Postby DirtDoc » Nov 28, 2011 9:35 am

This post moved by DirtDoc to place it in the proper sequence.
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Re: Laos and Vietnam Karst Reconnaissance

Postby DirtDoc » Nov 28, 2011 10:05 am

9- Laos-Vietnam Karst Reconnaissance

Sunday and Monday

Two days on the Mekong at Tha Khaek. Local karst really interesting- a lot like that around Yangshuo in China. Cockpit and tower karst of about the same scale, but with taller stuff behind.

Went into a large karst area following the outflow from another large cave (Tham Pha Chan), through the limestone ridge and out into the next valley, where we found one of the entrances (resurgence) of Than Koun Don. I'm told that there is something like 21 km of mapped cave so far.

Water was too high to enter without major swimming. We had gone clear through one cave and had been wandering around in the rain forest for a while on anastomosing logging trails (person size, not truck size). We decided to head back without swimming into it. The GPS said we were 2.5 km from the truck but that was air distance. Locals were cutting trees that were 2 m in diameter, and we saw older, larger stumps - in excess of 3 m. They were ripping boards on site with a chain saw. When the boards were small enough, they carried them on their shoulders back through the cave. We probably walked 6-7 km.

Back to the highway in time to bop through a "commercial" cave. Great by Lao standards but I'm not writing home about it. Tham Nang Aen (or some version of that spelling) in the guidebooks.

Tomorrow we head east to the big river cave near the Vietnam border described in the July 2009 issue of the NSS News http://www.caves.org/pub/nssnews/july09_nssnews.pdf mapped by a combined US and Canadian expedition. The NEWS article calls the cave Tham Khoun Xe, but Tham Xe Bang Fai is the preferred local name. The French have called it Grotte de Xe Banf Fai . The French have been exploring the cave since 1867. Claude Mouret began mapping it in 1995 and published a description and small map of the cave in the 90s. After the NSS NEWS article was distributed in 2009 at the International Congress of Speleology Congress in Kerrville, Texas, Claude Mouret published an article (including a more complete map of the cave than the Canadian/American teams map) based on the extensive French exploration over the years.

Tham Xe Bang Fai has been occasionally visited for ecotourism since 2005 and is one of the most superb cave rivers on Earth.

Gotta go and pack wet boots and stuff.

DirtDoc.

Mekong River at Tha Khaek, Laos, looking at Nakhon Phanom, Thailand across the river. A vehicle ferry is in the foreground. Just a few days before we arrived, they opened a new bridge and border crossing just north of here. That is the first bridge across the Mekong in this area and will greatly facilitate commerce between the two countries.
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Breakfast on the Mekong, Tha Khaek
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A shrine along the road to Tham Pha Chan. You encounter shrines and small monasteries seeming in the middle of nowhere throughout Laos. There were no monks around, but the shrine was clearly well tended.
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The road to Tham Pha Chan showing the flat-floored interior karst valley (polje), photographed from the shrine shown above.
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Tham Pha Chan - lower entrance. You could actually drive a short distance into the cave. This large conduit provides a trade route for locals through the limestone ridge to the karst valley on the other side.
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Tham Koun Don - main resurgence from a fairly extensive cave system, rumored to have over 21 km of passage and still going. We reached this by passing completely through Tham Pha Chan.
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Log bridge crossing the stream flowing out of Tham Koun Don.
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Tham Xieng Liap - another through cave. A nice swimming hole at the upstream entrance. You can go 700 m through the limestone ridge and come out in the next downstream valley.
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Re: Laos and Vietnam Karst Reconnaissance

Postby DirtDoc » Dec 2, 2011 9:34 am

10- Laos-Vietnam Karst Reconnaissance

Tuesday Nov 29

Left Tha Khaek, Laos, for Boualapha (Boua La Pha), the district headquarters that issues permits to visit Tham Xe Bang Fai river cave (Juy 2009 NSS News - see link in previous post). Long, slow, dusty, very bumpy drive on a laterite roads full of water buffalo wallows. Spent the night in the government guesthouse - reminds me of rural China in the old days. Have to get three sets of permits from different offices -- From the forestry office, the tourism office, and the protected area office.

Wednesday Nov 30

Breakfast of cold sticky rice and ketchup. Boat ride up the river to the village by the downstream cave entrance. Had to get their permission next, appease the cave spirits, etc. Got to the monster river cave as described in the NEWS.

Thursday Dec 1

Repeated the bumpy dusty laterite road back west to sealed highway. East across the border into Vietnam. Getting out of Laos and into Vietnam not bad. The truck took more time to get across the border than the people. Crossing the pass we found more impressive karst on the Vietnam side due to the increased rain from the Gulf of Tonkin. Thicker rain forest, too. A chop on top of the El Abras in Mexico is a Sunday sidewalk stroll compared to getting through this stuff. Oh yes, don't forget that under the jungle are very formidable karren blades and karst towers.

Friday Dec 3

Drove into the Phong-Nha Park (a World Heritage Site) to take a look. We knew we had to have permits to get past the check points - but we did not have them yet. Found the gate open and no one around, so kept going. Passed some construction workers who obviously did not care. Then stopped at a huge spring that must drain miles of cave and encountered a free-lance guide and had a useful conversation. The issue of permits never came up - we obviously must have had them to get this far and it was not his job to ask. Next interior check point did not seem to have anyone in sight either, although a guy in a brown uniform on a motor bike passed us going the other way. For a moment I thought he was going to chase us, but if he did, he gave up before he caught up. No one on the road, which is called the Ho Chi Min Highway. Got to the start of the day-long hike to the Worlds Biggest Cave - Son Doong (according to the National Geographic).

By this time we had climbed up the side of clastic (sandstone to mudstone) mountains that stratigraphically overlay the limestone karst, which stretched more than 50km to the west into Laos and where we had been two days ago at Xe Bang Fai. To say that this is one the Earth's greatest karst and cave country seems an understatement. From a vista of the jungle-covered vastness below us, I expect there could be on the order of 10's of thousands of caves, many of them Great Caves.

But to find them!! The jungle covers everything in this incredibly rugged landscape. Howard Limbert - the Brit who took the Geographic in - has been working here for 20 years and only found this one a couple of years ago, and then only because he was talking to a local woodsman who remembered seeing it years ago. They found it with his help, but only with difficulty. It takes more permits to get there, and three days just to hike in, camp, and look into the entrance, and return.

Without question, there are a lot more to be found.

We went on, passing another forest ranger station - again no one in sight but for three fairly fiercely barking dogs. Ended up, still on the Ho Chi Min Highway, out of the karst and up in the clouds above 700 m. Turned around and when we passed the barking dogs, saw someone getting their pants on and looking out the window at us. Must have woken him up - it was about noon. Kept going and found the lower gate still open. Exited without incident and after a wonderful road trip!

Had lunch and then took the commercial tour through Phong-Nha Cave. Another boat ride, another big river passage with a decorated upper level with nice colored lights. Sigh.

DirtDoc

Why do they build all those houses on stilts? Last August the water was high. Note the flood mark of mud about at the top rail, just below the windows.
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Buying diesel from the drum.
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A series of images of the road to Boua La Pha and on to Xe Bang Fai cave.
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Now the trail to the cave.
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For the best photos from inside Xe Bang Fai cave, see the ones that Dave Bunnell took for National Geographic and published in the July 2009 issue of the NSS News http://www.caves.org/pub/nssnews/july09_nssnews.pdf

We also approached the cave from the river itself. Here we are getting into a long-tailed boat where the road comes to the Xe Bang Fai river. The maps all showed it to be a fairly short distance farther north to the sealed (paved) road to Vietnam. I had wondered why we had come the long way over bad roads. The maps don't tell you that there is no bridge, and even at very low water you need a big truck equipped with a snorkel (we saw quite a few of those) to cross here.
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Here is how you cross it on a motorcycle.
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Riverside karst.
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Entrance from the river.
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Last edited by DirtDoc on Jul 19, 2012 9:20 am, edited 13 times in total.
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Re: Laos and Vietnam Karst Reconnaissance

Postby Phil Winkler » Dec 2, 2011 10:27 am

Hey, Dwight,

Fascinating tales and what an adventure you all are having. I was on the east coats of Vietnam way back in the day. There was one cave on a mountain named VC Hill that I drove by one day, but didn't try to visit as it was dangerous.
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Re: Laos and Vietnam Karst Reconnaissance

Postby DirtDoc » Dec 3, 2011 7:59 pm

TEXT EDITING AND IMAGE SELECTION NOT COMPLETE.

IMAGES FROM THE DRIVE INTO VIETNAM TO BE POSTED HERE



IMAGES OF OUR FIRST DAYS ROAD TRIP INTO PHANG NHA PARK TO BE POSTED HERE

Preliminary images. Posting in progress.

As you look at the jungle-covered karst, think about trying to find a cave entrance under this stuff. Even if you had GPS coordinates from a remote-sensing survey that could see the bedrock beneath the vegetation (ground penetrating radar, infrared on very cold days, etc), it would be a very difficult effort. In addition, high-relief karren (sharp, tall, blades of limestone) occurs on the bedrock surface beneath the vegetation.


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This is actually a view up a trail cut through the jungle.
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Park Road
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That's the Ho Chi Min Highway at the bottom of the image. It follows, more or less, the network of trails called the Ho Chi Min Trail that was much bombed and defoliated during the "American War". Unexploded ordinance is another hazard when cave hunting in this jungle.
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The karst extends more than 50 kilometeres into the distance.
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GO TO PAGE TWO FOR THE NEXT POST, WHICH IS NUMBER 11 !! GO TO THE BOTTOM RIGHT BELOW THE POST BELOW AND CLICK ON THE LITTLE BOX THAT IS MARKED "2", OR ON THE LITTTLE ARROW THAT SAYS "Next"
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Re: Laos and Vietnam Karst Reconnaissance

Postby Cody JW » Dec 4, 2011 8:30 pm

Thanks for the posts Dirt Doc. I have not heard much about caves in Vietnam .
It only takes one person to surrender a dog to a kill shelter ,but it takes many to rescue it.
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