Lost In Laos

How did I end up somewhere in Laos, straddling my beaten up backpack by the side of a desolate dirt road, waiting for a bus that may or may not exist?
I blame the guy at the hostel in Tha Khaek who said there’d be a bus. Or better yet, I blame the dodgy dinner on Don Det that forced my unscheduled Tha Khaek stopover in the first place. Not that I had an actual schedule- or anything even remotely resembling a plan- but continuously throwing up on an 11 hour bus journey certainly had never featured in my ‘must-do’ Asia activities. So I- the most popular passenger- disembarked the bus and stumbled towards a hostel where I spent the next 3 days dying a slow and painful death.
But I rallied! With nothing but 7Up keeping me alive- and my memories of Tha Khaek reduced to toilet bowls and a frustrating quest for rehydration salts- I ventured on. Maybe my sickness was a blessing, because during my downtime I discovered I was quite ideally located for a detour to the impressive Kong Lor cave. I had done some caving in New Zealand and was intrigued by tales of this 7km inky underground river that snaked its way under the limestone mountain ranges.
Enter the bus liar. “Jump off at this junction and there’ll be a bus waiting to take you the rest of the way!” he assured. So I jumped off at the junction, no bus. I approached every songthaew driver visible, and all my hopeful queries of “Kong Lor?” were met with solemn shakes of the head. “Do you know how I get to Kong Lor?” I asked just about everybody. Nobody knew, or at least didn’t understand. I realise as a traveller, the onus is on me to learn the local language, but it still amazes me that their level of English doesn’t extend to “Bus?”, but they’re all perfectly capable of pointing out: “No boyfriend?”
So there I sat, perched awkwardly for hours on my backpack with the relentless Laotian sun beating on my back, waiting for nothing. Visions filled my half-starved brain of towering karst mountain ranges silhouetted against a perfect blue sky and dark, dramatic caverns that delved into the deep places of the world. Would I ever get the see it? Or would I be stuck here, at this unspectacular crossroads, staring at the dust and heat haze until I deteriorated into a panic as night fell?
As I contemplated a rather ludicrous scenario of having to dig a burrow for shelter should I still be here by sunset, a heavily accented but distinctly in-English voice startled me. “You are looking for Kong Lor?”
“Yes. Yes I am."