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PHAPHENG FALLS The village gong awoke us at 6am. After breakfast of Chinese donuts and honey we set off to meet the little boat which we had hired for the day. We traveled down river for about an hour to a village on the other side, where our boatman was unsuccessful in finding the motorbikes and their drivers, which were to take us to the falls. He took us further on to Ban Nakasong, which is the last village before Cambodia, where he found them.
We set off on the back of the motorbikes. Graham's driver promptly turned back to go and buy a Pepsi bottle full of petrol. My bike kept going and I was slightly worried as I didn't know where they had gone. Graham was even more worried as his bike kept breaking down and then going even faster to try and catch up with mine. We rode on the back of these motorbikes for nearly an hour. It was quite hair raising as the track was very full of pot holes and mud and it was raining. My driver was very careful. There was no other traffic, there is hardly any in Laos, and we did not see any people or houses.
The Phapheng Falls are the biggest cascades in South East Asia and with the flood water it was very impressive and well worth seeing. This is the point where the Mekong is 14km wide and the area is known as 4000 islands as the river splits over such a large area. None of our photos show the falls well enough. After returning to the boat we set off to Li Phi Falls which are near the edge of Cambodia. The scenery on the way was lovely. The river was enormous and powerful, but quite silent. There were countless tiny islands, many with a few people living on them, with their animals. Everyone came out to wave.
There were also the tops of trees sticking up out of the water where islands had been submerged. Our boatman must have been very skilled and have known the area very well to be able to find his way safely.
We were dropped on an island. The owner of our guest house had drawn a small map which showed the paths to take. A monsoon started, with thunder, and we sheltered by a Wat in the middle of jungle-like vegetation.
A woman joined us, and wanted to show us the way. We walked a long way down small jungle paths, crossing wobbly little bridges and planks. There were a lot of termites eating the wood here, but no leeches or mosquitoes.
The cascades are where the fresh water dolphins come, but not in August. We ate our packed lunch of sticky rice and omelet at the falls. It took much longer to get back because it was against the current of the river. We left the island the following day and remember the journey back to Pakse because of the frogs. People living near the road were catching frogs in the flooded ditches and popping them into sacks. As the lorry approached they would tie up the sacks and load them on. The whole lorry was full of bags of frogs. We had two piled under our feet and worried about them getting damaged all the way back to Pakse.
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