Waterfalls and gibbons

Trip Start Aug 15, 2006

136

155

Trip End May 27, 2008

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Flag of Lao Peoples Dem Rep Paksong, Lao Peoples Dem Rep
Friday, March 14, 2008

Yesterday we had a quick dip back in the pools then drove to what we'd heard was Laos' highest waterfall, Nam Tok Katamtok. Indeed it was huge but we could only see it from the road the other side of the valley and there seemed to be no way to reach it. We decided to drive further to see if we could find a path or small dirt track to rech it but instead came across a bridge that we could clamber underneath to access the river and noticed some small waterfalls and pools down to the right of the bridge, maybe 100m away. We hid the bike and dumped our stuff so we could try and walk to the small falls. The water was a little chilly but it was nice and refreshing in the sticky heat of midday. We were quite pleased with ourselves that we'd stumbled across territory that wasn't in our guidebook!

We drove on towards Paksong and passed lots of small villages and saw a real insight into local life

Nam Tok Katamtok

. We had to get petrol and the first place we visited tried to rip us off (whispering 'falang price' to his friend) but we managed to quickly find an honest person and refuel. We were late arriving in Paksong, whizzed around the market to get some snacks (where we saw Brent from our previous night) and then found that there weren't many places to stay the night in town. We drove to a guesthouse near a waterfall we planned to visit the following day (and saw Brent again!) but it wasn't very good so drove around and found the Borlaven guesthouse which gave us a good deal on our room, but the downside was it was cold showers and the nighttime temperature on the Bolaven plateau becomes pretty nippy!

We drove back into town to find a place to eat and after driving back we were frozen and offerred the guesthouse an extra 10,000kip to let us use a hot shower in one of the other rooms! I played an energetic game of football with their cute toddler who kept screaming with laughter every time I put the ball his way. I told his dad he was very noisy and he didn't understand what I meant so he looked it up in the Dictionary and laughed at me!

Today we got up and Ollie went around the back of the guesthouse to fetch the bike and suddenly started shouting me...my heart sank as I thought that maybe the bike was broken but when I went to see what the fuss was about I was faced with two gibbons swinging around a tree in the back yard! We watched them for a while as they were so fascinating!

We left and drove to Tad Fane resort and waterfall. There were some huge twin falls but we couldn't access them as they were across the valley

Possibly the highest in Laos

. We tried to find a trail down but no luck. We asked in the restaurant if there was access and they told us about a trail that led to a small waterfall on the edge of a cliff. We swam and went back to the restaurant for a fantastic lunch which also meant that we were able to get our admission to the waterfall refunded which was a bonus!

We got back to pakse to find all of the hotels were full so we hopped on a sleeper bus to Vien Kham - the driver kept saying he wouldn't stop for us in the middle of the night to let us off there even though we had bought the corretc ticket but a helpful sales girl talked him into it. We were dropped off at 3am in the cold dark night in a small place where notjing was open and there was nowhere to stay so we got out scrabble and played on a table. At one point we were visited by a local guy who wanted some water and he tried to chat with us but we didn't get very far with the language barrier!