This article comes to you from Pakse, just like the last one. You may think that we've not moved for days, and of course usually you'd be right, but this time we have actually done stuff - quite a lot actually for such a short space of time unless you think we're just making it up as we go along. Which in a sense we are of course...
We took an early morning boat from Pakse to the delightfully small and well-located village of Champasak arriving around lunch time, whereupon with our usual vim we took to our beds. It was seriously, mind-sappingly, energy-suckingly hot there and our brains slowed down to the level of Pratchettesque trolls until, round about 3 o'clock, we somehow managed to collar a passing jumbo and ride out to Wat Phu. In short, the place was absolutely mesmerizing: it was Angkor Wat minus tourist crowds and some size, incredibly atmospheric and imbued with all the exotic, mysterious spine-tingly earth-spookiness that they promote Angkor Wat with and which the notorious Tomb Raider tried to capture. Lingams abound in honour of Shiva, tall dark ruins of huge stone slabs now haphazardly perched atop each other, a stone yoni dedicated to Kali and tall steps of stone-carved snakes leading up the higher chambers.
I particularly enjoyed exploring the area behind the high temple, where few go beyond, and finding the documented 'crocodile stone': a carved rock with a cut-out shape just about right for a human body to fit into, adding weight to the popular idea that an annual human sacrifice took place here. Beyond that there was an 'elephant stone', at which point we realized we were the only ones left and our driver was probably going spare at the bottom, so we reluctantly returned sneaking into a closed-off rear chamber just behind the 'official' worship room in the high temple; needless to say that the main temple's mockingly smiling Buddhas were indeed concealing an area of quite some power, or so it seemed to me with my fertile imagination. Luckily our driver was a man of infinite patience and he delivered us safely back at our room in time for tea. The day had been quite wonderful and was certainly the highlight I had been hoping for.
Rising early the next day, something that is dangerously close to becoming a habit for us, we set off on the mammoth task of covering some 40 kilometres to the very southern point of Laos where we hoped to spend a day or 2 on Si Phan Don, an area of '4000 islands' in the middle of the Mekong which at this point has swollen to its widest point. The journey somehow managed to take exactly all the sunlight hours that the day could give us and involved an improbable bus that shouldn't have been there waiting for us at the beginning of the journey, much slow and complicated short hops, and finally a very nice man in a boat who delivered us to precisely the place we were hoping for - the northern coast of Don Khon. This island caught our eye as it had reputedly escaped the horrors of uncontrolled tourist development and more to the point was the best launch point for seeing endangered Irrawaddy dolphins.
Our journey through the islands took us first to the largest one, Don Khong in the north which seemed pleasant enough, then onto Don Det which didn't. It does seem to have given itself over wholesale to unregulated tourism, which is well understandable from the point of view of the local communities but which without the kind of excellent intervention from a responsible government that has been evident in many places we have been in Laos will lead to its decline both environmentally and as a desirable tourist spot. Arriving on Don Khon was a great relief as we landed in a village that, although certainly could not be said to be un-touristy, did seem to be well controlled and able to retain the original flavour of the place - a much more sustainable destination all round.
We went by car to a nearby waterfall that evening, and regretted the car bit. It just felt wrong to tear through the countryside in that way contributing to the noise, pollution, and disregard for the villagers. The waterfall was easily walkable and the trip served as a sharp reminder of how close we come sometimes on this journey to being part of the problem rather than the solution. The waterfall itself was not high but was ferocious and wide churning up everything in the area, and this was the dry season: I can only imagine the power of it after the rains come. The next morning we, well, we didn't do anything at all actually, and only really sprang into life at about 3 p.m. after some very welcome idling in hammocks gazing vacantly at the impossible beauty offered up by this tropical river-bound archipelago. The gazing was damn hard work in that heat, even with plenty of dozing breaks, but somehow we rallied and in the fading heat of late afternoon tramped off to a nearby beach to pick up another small boat. We went this way to the southern point of the island and beyond, to a rocky look-out point where we exhausted ourselves with yet more staring, this time into the mid-distance of the river to look for dolphins which I'm gleefully, jubilantly delighted to report are alive and well, at least in this part of the world. We spend a good hour watching dolphins arc through the water, not-jumping-according-to-Ellen-but-I-thought-they-were, frolicking and generally being as dolphinny as I'd always imagined, and it was for me a beautiful moment of connection with the river and the life it supports. It is strange to think that because of this trip then out of all the waterways of the world I probably have the strongest familiarity and understanding of the Mekong, a world away from where my blood and bones are from, such has been the river-based nature of our travels through Laos.
Most of the river-boats in Laos, while still being of the shallow, long, hollowed-out tree type design, are now fitted with motors and this is clearly not good news for the dolphins, already endangered and so reliant on echo-location: clearly these new-fangled motors are totally disruptive to their navigation and communication systems and cannot be aiding their plight. However I do not feel that in this instance it is all bad news: firstly the number of boats on the Mekong is in sharp decline as roads get built and surfaced (road travel is inevitably cheaper and faster), and in Don Khon the dolphin-watching is really well managed: the guides take all tourists to the same rock (despite plenty of complaints, and bribes I'm sure) and this rock is some way away from the dolphins' zones, close enough to see faintly but far enough away to not be actively intrusive (apart from the boat motors of course). For once this is one endangered species I have had the wonderful opportunity to see where I think maybe, with a fair tail-wind and continued sensible governance, my bones may rot before theirs.
