Into Each Heart Some Water Falls

Waterfalls around Pakse

Pakse, where the Se River joins the Mekong, is the main city in southern Laos and the gateway to Champasak and Si Phan Don. Champasak is known for an ancient shrine (1) that is now the World Heritage Wat Phou* temple. Si Phan Don are the '4000' islands in the Mekong River with SE Asia's mightiest waterfall: Khon Phapheng.

Wat Phou Champasak and Hill tribe Villages

Phu Pasak Mt. (Penis Mt.), a fertility shrine lentil at main sanctuary, Shiva sitting above a Kala Touché & Guy at the elephant shrine
Wat Phou's holy mountain, a lentil with Shiva on the Khmer temple and the elephant shrine
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Guesthouses in Pakse offer backpackers tours that combine a visit to one or more hill tribe villages with stops at several waterfalls in the beautiful undulating landscape to the East of town.
Laos has been populated with consecutive waves of peoples that for the most part emigrated from southern China. The first to arrive, the majority of ‘lowland’ Lao, occupied the best parts of the country. later arrivals found spaces higher and higher up the hills and mountains in the hinterland. Some of those hill tribes live in very basic conditions and get little support from the powers that be.
Most of the time, visiting hill tribes feels voyeuristic, as if they’re not human but some kind of freaks, living in poverty and destitution, a blast from the past. Some tour organisers therefore include a kind of ‘development aid’, be it schoolbooks or simply some bars of soap. Around the village are rice paddies and other plantations and the villagers sell pineapples at the roadside.

path in a hill tribe village hill tribe house on stilts
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The Long Twin Falls

The scenery around Pakse is fantastic, and the tour we went on took us along several great waterfalls. First, there were these high twin falls, seen from the other side of the valley.

twin falls panorama twin falls pooring out of the rocks a look at the right fall the couple at the viewpoint the lush rainforest splashing down full height of the mountain the abundance of nature
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The Waterfall Park

A bit further, we stopped at a kind of leisure park, centred on another, big waterfall. Above the fall, tables with parasols are ready for locals (and tourists) to enjoy a day near the water.

leisure park on top of the falls rickety bridge to the leisure ground above the falls Touché at the leisure park cooling her feet the falls tumbling down down from the second level the pool below looking down the drop the river pases through some more rapids the pool below Guy near the top of the fall the falls tumbling down twin falls the pool below some steps before the big jump the falls tumbling down jumping from stone to stone the pool below a happy couple at the twin falls taking to the waters
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The Broad Falls

Finally, we came to a rather low, but much broader fall, that we could spot from a bridge on our road back to Pakse. It made our collection of cataracts complete and the tour a success.

the broad falls a full view of the falls coming down the steps detail of the broad falls
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(1) Wat Phou Champasak is an ancient place of worship around a mountain source on the side of Phu Pasak, a fertility shrine venerated by the civilisations of Funan, Chenla*, the Cham, Khmer Hindus and finally present-day Buddhists. For Touché and me it has a very special meaning, because the first photo she saw of me was taken at the foot of this temple when I visited in 2002. We returned here together in 2006.

Guy's original photo beneath the banyan tree the banyan tree revisited
The first photo Touché saw of Guy and that completely enchanted her... and our visit of the very same place at our fourth wedding anniversary in 2006 (the pavilion behind me was torn down by the workers who took my photo in 2002)
All photos, movies, and texts (except those signed by Touché Guimarães) were made/written by Guy Voets, and everything is published under the Creative Commons BY-NC-SA license (attribution, non-commercial, share-alike).

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photos from 2002 & 2006.

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