The Road to Tad Lo
After our time in Pakse was up, we set off on to the next stop on our adventure, the tourist trap / village of Tad Lo, an enterprise that has sprung up around the local waterfall of the same name. Unlike other bus trips on this vacation, this one went really smooth and really well, and was actually, dare I say, enjoyable, as we went along the west side of the Bolaven Plateau. We loaded up at the Pakse Bus Station, which was a perfect example of a classic SE Asia bus station. All manner of buses, large and small, with passengers strolling around in a vast dirt lot. In Laos there also exists a transportation network of small van-trucks that carry passengers and people alike. The station wasn't overwhelming with activity, but it was still a bustling crossroads.
The road to Salavan was quite beautiful- small farms and little villages, crossing over numerous streams and rivers. While the Bolaven Plateau has a sheer headwall on it's north, east, and southern sides, along it's northwestern side it rises in a series of broad ledges, making the transition in a series of steps, rather than one massive cliff face. These ledges are gigantic basalt layers, and are very similar to bedrock seen in Washington, Oregon, and Idaho. As Laos is a country of water and rivers, there are numerous drainages that have carved channels down the sides of the plataeus, and just like in the US, anytime one of these ledges appears, a waterfall will appear. That is the case at Tad Lo, where a series of waterfalls along the Xe Set (Set River) have given rise to a small collection of tourist hotels and restaurants.
Tad Lo Village
We came here because it was a chance to see more waterfalls, and because our friends Angie and Piotr had been here and said they like it. The place was kinda rough, with very cheap homemade buildings, and very little infrastructure. However, we ended up finding a pretty decent resort called the Tad Lo Lodge, and it was a nice place to call home for a couple nights. Up the road we found a large hydropower project that had dewatered a large and formerly powerful waterfall upstream that we were hoping to see. Such is the case in Laos as many rivers and creeks are being dammed or dewatered for power generation for China. At any rate, the lower falls located in the tourist village were unaffected so we still got to enjoy them. There are really two groups of falls that make up Tad Lo, the first is right in town, and the bridge that connects the two sides of the river crosses the river right below the falls. Since we were there at the end of the high water season the falls were running big and especially powerful.
Most of the locals we met were either very shy or friendly, even if nobody spoke any English. On evening hikes outside of our hotel we encountered plenty of friendly folk, especially the kids. In fact, the only people we encountered we didn't care for were the fellow travelers. Not all of them, for sure, as many were quite nice and pleasant, but there was a good population of people who were there to get shit-house plastered on Beerlao every day until the Visa ran out. The dirtbags of travel. But we stayed clear of them and instead focused on enjoying the slow pace of life in the area. We watched some kids swimming in the river for a while, pretty exciting day in Tad Lo.
All photos copyright Kit Davidson unless otherwise noted.