Bolavan Plateau

Riding a scooter around Southeast Asia, it doesn't take long to get accustomed to gusts of hot air blasting up against the front of your body or the side of your bike. It causes just a slight variation from your path marked out on the long straight county road. What really caught me by surprise was the gust of cool air. As the hotter rainier season approaches you wouldn't expect such a sensation, even if the guidebook warned you. We were headed to higher pastures, a plateau known mostly for its cultivation of coffee. Apparently a lot of French folks like to visit and do coffee tastings. After all, without their colonial oversight, those coffee plantations might not have ever existed. Knowing their love of coffee, I wasn't so surprised when the first tourists we saw at our lunch stop were Korean. I replied to their “Sabaidee” with an “Anyonghaseo” and they were pleasantly surprised.

I saw my first coffee plant up their on the Bolavan Plateau and now I could probably pick one out from a hundred yards. Plantation after plantation start to line the road about 40 kilometers from Pakse. Pakse is the jumping off point to a couple of notable places in the south of Laos. With about a week left, after spending nearly three in the north, we decided to take the full four weeks of our visa and add the south to our itinerary. An overnight bus took us to Pakse, a city that we could use as a base for a trip to the Bolavan Plateau and another to Si Phan Don (4000 Islands). Already accustomed to these types of trips, the Lakhan hotel offered multiple day scooter rentals and luggage storage. After a day spent in their lobby booking flight tickets and planning the second two months of our Southeast Asian trip, we rented a 115cc Honda Wave and packed a bag. We were to take a small, three day vacation from our vacation starting the following morning.

In exploring the Bolavan Plateau there are two options from Pakse, the big and small circuit. The big circuit takes five days and it travels to more remote towns in the mountains near the Vietnam border. It offers more scenic roads through more isolated villages and a more dramatic landscape, including the nations highest waterfall. Considering both time and funds, we decided on the small circuit. The small circuit takes the visitor up to the plateau but cuts off the more dramatic, mountainous landscape. It passes coffee plantations and waterfalls located on the plateau's edge and gives the visitor a glimpse of small villages in the region in a three day tour.

Leaving Pakse the road slowly climbed in a continuous gradual slope the entire way to Paksong. Not far out of Pakse the road began to offer surprises. First there was a small village of stalls displaying pineapples, jackfruits, and durians for sale. Piles of fruit at stall after stall with cars and truck stopping at there favorite vendor to pick up a couple, or a load of fruit. I slowed the moto down to take in the smell of pineapple that came at me from two directions forcing me to stop and shop at one of the final stalls. We picked up one pineapple for the foreigner-inflated price of about a dollar. Shortly after fruit village, I slowed the moto down for a pass through blacksmith village. Instead of fruits, stall after stall displayed racks of different shaped knives for sale, their anvils and hot coal-fueled fires behind the wares. You could hear the ting of the hammer on red glowing steel. We stopped by one stall at just the right time. One man had taken out a glowing piece of metal and placed it over the anvil. Next, he picked up a large hammer and began to join another man in pounding it in succession, one after another. Next we passed the Dao coffee factory putting off a strong smell of roasted coffee. Shortly after the factory began the coffee plantations, one after another. Finally, we started seeing signs that necessitated stop, waterfalls.

We weren't expecting much. After all, we are at the tail end of the dry season. A waterfall near Vang Vieng yielded only a small trickle. It was worth a stop though as our behinds were beginning get sore. I've found that my butt can't last much more than an hour straight on one of these Southeast Asian scooters before I have to get up, stretch out, and walk around a bit.

Our first Bolavan waterfall was stunning. We started out at the top of the falls and explored further upstream before checking out the waterfall. Just up the hill from the stream was a coffee plantation. A rickety bridge made out of a couple of logs and some branches led us across stream and we followed the trail uphill to the coffee plantation. Due to the sign postings, we were expecting to arrive at a larger falls upstream but instead we arrived at a couple of country homes in the middle of the plantation. The women and children sat out on the large porch of the stilted Laos home. We asked about a waterfall pointing further up the trail and they shook their heads and pointed us back. Maybe there was one further up, maybe not, but we went back. As we approached the base of the falls rain began to fall. It was a surreal scene as the sun was shining on the falls and the tall grasses beside the trail, but a fine mist floated down coating everything in wet. I searched for a rainbow but couldn't locate one.

The second Bolavan waterfall, Tad Fane, was just a nice view for us. Accessing Tad Fane from the main road brings you to a resort with some bungalows and a restaurant. The restaurant hosts a foreign (my guess is European) coffee enthusiast that gives tours of plantations and the coffee making process. We arrived when he was showing some other foreigners around and it made us curious. I later looked it up for a possible activity the following day but it is only an afternoon affair and we had lost our chance. Aside from the coffee guy, a few very comfortable hammocks and a view of Tad Fane are close by. The viewpoint is far above the falls across the gorge looking down. Two narrow strips of water trickle out of the thick green of a jungle to fall into a pool forming a “V” shape. The pool is so deep that it is barely visible from the viewpoint. I located a trail that may have descended to the pool but from the viewpoint I saw how deep it was and estimated a long descent/climb before we could move on to our next destination.

Just across the main road from Tad Fane's access road is a sign to another waterfall. With time on our side, we ventured two kilometers down the pothole-filled dirt road to visit our third and final waterfall for the day. As the sun was starting to get low in the sky, we climbed down the make-shift ladder to the stream where we could access the pool. Finally, we were at a place were we could take a dip. Despite the cooler air of the Bolavan Plateau, the midday sun had taken its toll. The way it beats down on ones arms and legs is ruthless and I have learned more than once that the skin is a goner without a good thick sunscreen or a long-sleeve shirt. Lao adolescents were floating on a raft, pulling it along a rope several meters to get poured on by the falling water. I saw them, later on, taking pulls on cigarettes, keeping the butts loosely held in between two fingers. Despite so many cultural differences kids will be kids in Laos, Romania, and America. I struggled to enter the boulder ridden pool of water until I finally carefully fell in so as not to hit a rock or twist an ankle. The water in these rivers is cool and refreshing after a hot day on the moto.

The second day of our vacation within a vacation began with a bit of a chat. We looked over a map and offered tips with some French folks heading in the opposite directions. They offered some big circuit advice in case we were to choose the long route. Before departing from Paksong we stopped at a coffee collective where we chatted with our barman about the coffee in the region, the collective, and coffee preparation. He showed us his roasters and we carefully watched a couple of different ways of preparing coffee.

When we finally got on the road, the destination was Tad Lo, another waterfall. The 80 or so kilometers was nicely broken up by slow cruises through villages and a couple of mandatory rain stops. At times, those lurking ominous clouds spat down on us. At the first stop we sat down to a bowl of noodles. Mihai carefully watched how the nicely dressed old women prepared our dish from a barrel of what looked to me to be rain water. The pots that cooked the food were cooked over a small wood fire and they were served with a plate of cabbage, string beans and mint. We've learned that the noodle soup is quite good, but it depends a lot on you. At the table you find chili, fish sauce, soy sauce, and sugar in addition to your plate of greens. It's up to you to add the taste and make it good to your liking. Mihai pays close attention to how locals proceed and I follow her lead. In the end, we get a tasty meal. Our second rain stop was during a strong downpour and we spent a good amount of time at a small road-side store where we bought cheap faulty ponchos and a pepsi. There, we watched how the children played in the rain and the mud, but also how they washed up afterward, as one of the village showers was located directly next to the store we were sitting at.

Tad Lo was much more set up for tourism than any of waterfalls we had visited the day before. There was a small village just below Tad Lo filled with bungalows, guesthouses and restaurants geared toward western tourists. After finding a bungalow to stay at we went to the falls. I was surprised again to see the volume of water pouring over the rocks. Further downstream was a spot were we could jump in the water and swim around. When I was finally finished with the pictures and ready to swim a bit I entered the water where some foreign kids were playing. As I slowly walked in, I noticed a boy venturing closer and closer to the strong rapids, thinking to myself, “I wouldn't get that close”. Sure enough, seconds later he was grasping at rocks with his hands as the current took him away. I immediately got out and ran downstream thinking that eventually I might be able to get down below him and catch him as he floats through the current. Meanwhile, his mother slowly stood up, barely looking concerned, clearly ignorant to the level of risk contained in these strong rapids. The boys instincts were good, and after floating down a bit and hitting a couple of rocks, he grabbed onto a large one and was able to hold. From there, some good local swimmers walked out through the rapids to grab onto him and carry him to safety. 

On a lighter note, shortly thereafter a couple of workers at the resort rode down to the stream atop two elephants and we watched as they washed the elephants there in front of us. When the worker wanted to get on top of the elephant, the elephant would bend his knee, offering a kind of ladder for the worker to climb. To wash the animal, the worker would stand atop it and put presser with his feet in different areas, instructing the elephant to duck down into the water. Then, the worker would scrape the elephants back releasing the thick crust of mud into the stream.

The final day took us first to a small village at the base of another large waterfall. This waterfall, Tat Seung, was much dryer on account of the two hydroelectric damns located above it. From there, it was a long sun-baked day through village after village. From the seat of the moto we admired the homes, watched children ride bikes back from school, saw roots out drying in the hot sun, and watched children play in the many streams that we crossed. It was a good glimpse of the rural life on our way back to Pakse. Then again, all of Laos seems like a good glimpse of the rural life.