Advertisement
Published: September 2nd 2007
Edit Blog Post
Day 129
We left the lovely Don Det on a small boat back to the mainland at 9am so we could catch the 10am local bus to Pakse. We arrived into Ban Nakaseng at about 9.15 and were taken to the bus station to wait for our bus. We had had the option to take the local bus (or songthaew which is actually a truck with covered benches in the trailer section) or the VIP bus, a snazzy air-conditioned coach. It wasn¡¦t going to be a very long journey, around 3 hours, so we had opted for the far cheaper local bus. We had jumped into the back to wait for it to depart when a toothless local fella came over and tried to talk to us. We understood pretty much nothing of what he said to us, not having perfected our Lao yet, so got out our guide book and turned to the language section hoping this might help. He was very excited by this and proceeded to give us a language lesson, hilarious guy!
The buses tend to wait until they are full up to leave so, eventually, at around 10.40am we left for Pakse. The journey
was great until we found that the bus station we were to be dropped at was about 6km out of town, luckily the bus driver took us to our hostel in town for a few extra kip.
Having settled in to the hostel we went out to get some much needed money and have a bite to eat. Pakse is a fairly quiet town but it's a good base from which to go and explore the Bolaven Plateau area. We looked into various options and decided to book a day tour for the following day.
Day 130
After some brekkie we jumped into the back of a songthaew for our tour. Our first stop was at a tea plantation. There are many tea and coffee plantations in the plateau as the ground is apparently particularly good there. It was misty and raining so we had a very quick look at the plantation, learnt about the process for drying the tea and then were able to try some delicious green tea.
Back on the road again our next stop was Tat Fan waterfall and we'd like to tell you how spectacular it was. Unfortunately we can't as
the mist had settled in the valley and we were unable to see it. It sounded very impressive though!
We then visited a coffee plantation that was owned by our guide's wife's family. We sat down for a taste of the excellent coffee and then went for a tour of the plantation. The plantation was near to another waterfall that we were to visit so we walked through the grounds down towards the river where we sampled some fresh grapefruit straight from the tree. Next we had to cross the river. There were rocks that could be used as stepping stones - in the dry season. These were now covered by about a foot of fairly fast flowing water so we rolled up our trousers and paddled across the river trying not to fall in!
Safely on the other side we walked to the next waterfall which thankfully this time we were able to see. It was fantastic and so powerful that although we were a good distance away from it we were still getting wet from the spray.
After a bite to eat we were back in the songthaew for the next part of our journey.
We stopped at a small village inhabited by a Lao minority group. We spent the next hour or so learning about their way of life and wandering around the village. Mark had a go at picking some peanuts with the local women and children and we played with and entertained the village kids, Chrissie plaiting some of the little girls' hair. We also tried smoking the bamboo waterpipe that the villagers begin to use from the age of around 3 (we found it really strange to watch young children smoking). It was an interesting and rewarding experience and we were sad to leave the village, definitely our highlight of the day.
Our last stop of the day was the waterfall at Tad Lo where we also saw elephants returning from giving rides to nearby villages. After that we returned to Pakse having thoroughly enjoyed our trip to the Bolaven Plateau. We rounded off the day with a superb curry for dinner with the people from our tour.
Advertisement
Tot: 0.297s; Tpl: 0.012s; cc: 49; qc: 171; dbt: 0.2065s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.5mb
yum yum
non-member comment
Yum curry
hello anus's!!! Hope you guys are missing us here in the Uk.. thinking of you all the time.. glad your still eating te curry.. me Karen and me linda would be pleased!! ha ha