Pakse - Waterfalls and Wats

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Flying with Laos Airlines was a pretty good experience and, if a bumpy overnight sleeper bus is your idea of hell, it's probably a very good idea. We certainly felt we had made the right decision. The only problem came at Pakse airport and there was nothing the airline could do about it.

We had booked to stay in the Champasak Palace which really was quite grand. Three French travellers waited, like us, for the complementary transfer to arrive. A different courier phoned the hotel for us and we were told to wait. A pick up eventually arrived after about half an hour. 5 passengers don't go into 4 seats too well but someone immediately volunteered to go in the back with the luggage. We don't think he was being heroic- he just wanted to smoke! On arrival at the hotel there was a shrug of the shoulders and a "nobody told us". A cursory glance at our booking, and that of the French, showed clearly that it included a complementary transfer and we had told them our flight times. "But nobody told us!" Fortunately the hotel was good, except for breakfast on days 2 and 3 when large groups of Asian tourists dominated the restaurant and anything remotely Western, like omelette, was removed from the menu. Who likes steamed rice and vegetables topped with a stone cold egg at 7am? Not us, but most guests were tucking in with some gusto!

Wandering around Pakse was a pleasure. We even found a tour agency doing exactly the tours we wanted to do so we booked with them and went for lunch. There was very little traffic and the town had a very laid back feel to it. Wat Luang was really worth looking round and we had the whole complex to ourselves which made a change. Then we ambled down the riverside road with views of the Mekong through the trees before zig zagging through hot dusty streets back to the hotel.

All trips seem to involve being ready to go at 8am and then waiting outside your hotel for your minibus to arrive, invariably closer to 0830 although someone may surely be the first to be collected. We were soon on our way to explore the Bolaven Plateau which turned out to be just as tropical and exotic as it sounds. French colonists have left behind a fine selection of tea, coffee and spice plantations. Our first stop was to view the impressive dual cascades of Tad Fan. The water has a sheer drop off a hundred feet or so and can be heard at full volume at the viewing platform on the other side of the valley. That's where we sat sipping freshly ground Laos coffee. If the falls are that impressive now, in the dry season, you do wonder how magnificent they must be in the wet season.

Next up was a coffee plantation. The word "tour" simply means transport in Laos and this was where you really needed a guide. There was a short walk through the plantation guided by information boards which were more about sustainability projects than teaching you about the process of making coffee. Fortunately we've been to other plantations and know how it works so we just enjoyed the walk. The coffee was nowhere near as good as the previous stop had been which was disappointing.

The third stop was to visit a traditional Lao village. Whilst it was interesting to see the coffee being dried in the sun, the old woman preparing sweet potato, and the impoverished children running around playing with pigs and chickens, it was nothing but intrusive. A guide could possibly have explained what village life is like and how our visit is helping the villagers to improve their lot. We suspect though that there is no program for improvements and that visits such as these are as we thought, just an intrusion into their lives.

Tad Lo was a fantastic place to stop for lunch. First, we walked around and saw the impressive falls from above. They are a bit like Niagara but on a much smaller scale. During the wet season it must be impossible to do some of the scrambling around that we did. Viewed from the front as we say having lunch, Tad Lo was a very special place indeed.

From there we made another stop at a "model healthy village" but with no guide we had no idea why it was so called. We think it was just a stop to encourage us to buy the textiles they had hanging up for sale. We were more interested in the enormous carpet of taro root drying in the sun. It was a waste of time as it was but we were delayed there further when three of the French travellers disappeared. It turned out that they were inside one of the local houses because one of them was of Laotian or Vietnamese descent and was able to communicate with the family. It's easy to see how people get left behind on tours!

Our final stop was at the Tad Phaxuam falls which were truly amazing. A swaying wooden bridge hangs across the river and if you watch your footing you can rock hop right to the edge of the waterfall. There was also an interesting ethnic museum which showed us far more in one hut than a stop at an ethnic village had. There were also stalls with delicious rotated sweet potato and sliced mango to eat. Then we were bundled back into the minibus and taken back to our hotel which was, by then, busy with bus loads of Thai tourists all ready to see in the Chinese Lunar New Year. Luckily their party didn't go on too late and the midnight fireworks didn't disturb us too much. We had another early start ahead of us.

Up again at ridiculous o'clock to wait for a bus at 8am. This time we were heading just a short way out of town to Wat Phou near the small town of Champasak. Our "tour" turned out to be just the transport. Not even entry to the ancient temple complex was included, so we were a bit grumpy to start with as we thought it should have been! From the entrance office we had a hot, sticky walk around the artificial lake to share the ruins began. What a spectacular setting for such an intriguing place. If you don't like steps, and very old, wonky, stone ones at that, then you should think twice before visiting!

The site begins with a long open corridor lined by stone pillars. Then you have the chance to explore two large quadrangles with some interesting frescoes and knee-damaging slippery slopes (just ask Trish!). We should have counted the number of stairs we had to climb. It must have run into hundreds but it was well worth the effort. Along the way there were a few places to stop and rest. Each step was carefully taken as they were uneven in surface, height and depth! The views were staggering.

At the very top is a Khmer temple, centuries old, which has a lot of charm and mystique around it. Further up was a spring of holy water where the devoted fill their bottles. It was quite dry and dusty as we scrambled around trying to find all of the listed sights. The elephant and crocodile rocks certainly took a little imagination to see their images but that's definitely what they were. A very careful climb back down the steps and a quick retrace of our route along the buffalo-lined lakes took us to the pretty uninspiring museum. Possibly the best thing was the collection of sketches on the wall outside. So that's what the elephant rock was supposed to look like!

The driver then headed straight back to Pakse. We had expected a lunch stop in Champasak on the way so we went to the office and complained. We had also missed out one waterfall the previous day so we had a gripe about that too. We did receive a decent refund but you do wonder if it's all a bit of a con with the office and the driver splitting the fees of everyone who doesn't complain.

We really liked Pakse but we still had one more place in Laos we wanted to go to. That meant an 8am bus for the third day in a row to take us down to the 4000 islands.

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Comments

[D MJ Binkley]

Perfect waterfall
Love this one.