Bolaven Plateau Road Trip: Our First Day and First Waterfall

Bolaven Plateau is one of southern Laos’ most attractive destinations. It sits on the bottom of a crater from a giant, extinct volcano and full of waterfalls, lush jungles, coffee plantations and good roads. 

It's close to the Thai border so Artur and I decided to go there when it was time to leave Thailand for a visa run. After spending 3 months in Bangkok we were very excited to see this new land.

First, we arrived in a small town named Pakse, walked to a street with hotels and homestays and rented a motorbike at Miss Noy, where her Belgian husband explained us everything about the plateau, gave us a map with his notes and even offered to keep our luggage. He was quite surprised when he saw that we have only 1 small backpack and didn't need any storage. Well, we planned to be in Laos for just 4 days, so we didn't need a lot of stuff.

At that time Artur didn't have a lot of experience driving a scooter - we only practiced once, on Ko Sichang island. And we were given a semi-automatic motorbike! That was kind of brutal. The hardest part for me was trying to not be nervous on the passenger's seat, to not move my body trying to retain balance when I felt that it was off . When I sit behind an experienced driver I'm relaxed, but behind a newbie, I want to try to help him with the balance, and that makes it even worse for him.

Then during our first day on the plateau, we were driving behind a couple of Lao girls on a motorbike and they fell, probably because the road was wet or something... That made me even more nervous!  😅  

But everything was ok, there was just one time when Artur tried to do a slow speed turn on a muddy road and we fell on one side, but it was even hard to call it a fall, it was more like a tilt  😂 

The rest of the time we enjoyed these beautiful landscapes. 

With an altitude of 1,000 to 1,300 meters, this area has a relatively cool climate and high rainfall. We visited it in July and there was quite a lot of rains, but luckily it was mostly sunny when we were visiting the waterfalls.

There's “short loop” and “long loop” on this plateau, we chose the short one, of course. You can see it on the map, it goes clockwise from Pakse to Thateng, then turn to Paksong and back to Pakse.

Tad Pasuam

At the end of the first day, we reached Tad Pasuam, the first waterfall.  The horseshoe shaped falls are pretty but small, standing at only six metres high. It wasn't very impressive, but still nice combined with pretty bridges and a village with women doing hand weaving of some fabric.  

Distance: 35 km from Pakse
Admission: 10,000 kip ($1.2) per person and 2,000 kip ($0.24) per motorbike  

By the way, the local waterfalls are more spectacular between July and October, which is the rainy season.

After this waterfall we decided to go forward a bit and stay at Katu Homestay, it's combined with his organic coffee plantation, it was so great that I will make a new post just about it!

All photos taken with Canon 550d 😊

Stay tuned for more!

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