after our relaxing time on don det, we took the bus to pakse. pakse itself is not such a nice town, but a good starting point to visit the ‘bolaven plateau’ the plateau is famous for its cool climate (which we enjoyed after 2 months of heat), waterfalls and coffee plantations - and it is one of the most heavily bombed areas of the second indochina war, so you better do not leave the ways.

on our way to pakse, we met bavlina and marc - a long-term travelling dutch couple (greetings!) with whom we did a three day motor scooter trip on the plateau. on the first day we went with our two motorbikes through the rain to ‘tat lo’ a little town which is famous for three waterfalls (from which we only visited two, we are becoming lazy ;-). as the weather was not so good (and my shoes have been extremely wet), we spent most of the remaining day at ‘mama pap’s place’ - mama pap is a very nice lao woman (we even got friendship bracelets), her banana pancakes are the biggest we’re ever seen, she prepared really fresh chicken laap for us (one our before we had dinner, she and some kids were chasing the chicken and her accommodation is simple, but good and cheap!

the next day, we drove to ‘pakxong’ the coffee capital of laos. on our way, we had to pass a really bumpy and extremely muddy road - but it was fun, especially christoph enjoyed the ride, even he would have preferred a dirt bike and no women with him ;-). we arrived in pakxong around midday at ‘coffee’s place’ - coffee is a dutch guy, who is addicted to coffee (strange… haa?) and lives on the plateau with his lao wife for almost a year. as he was very nice and his coffee tasted extremely good (christoph drunk more coffee than in the last 5 years), we decided to do the coffee workshop which he offers and to stay the night in his house. during the workshop we learned a lot of things: which stuff you need on coffee plantations, how people travel to coffee plantations (we also drove on the back of a truck over bumpy roads, but not for hours) and live there, what kinds of coffee are planted in laos and how they look like (at certain ages)… particularly impressive was to roast coffee by ourselves in a wok (dear parents, we hope you enjoy it!) and to drink it afterwards. but we also enjoyed the dinner, which coffee’s wife cooked for us, very much: probably the best fish soup we ever had - delicious!

after the end of our coffee workshop the next afternoon, we drove back to pakse. on the way, we visited ‘tat fane’ which is supposed to be the most impressive (120 meter high) waterfall on the plateau. even it was very foggy, and we could see it only for a few moments, it is really an amazing waterfall.

written by julia

This entry was posted on Saturday, September 27th, 2008 at 2:21 pm and is filed under laos. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.