Waterfall #2 and River Boat

After the elephant village we headed about 15mins down the road to visit Tat Sae waterfalls. While I could have done this as an excursion from the elephant camp, having Ou made it easier to just drive up there and rent a local boat to take me across the river to get there.

I bought my ticket for the boat and hoped I to my private long boat for a short 5min ride down river to the waterfall. Opposite the dock (if you can call it that) is a floating tent resort that was “built for the Chinese” but not yet open. Arriving at the falls I was expecting to need to buy a ticket but all the infrastructure here was demolished.

Other than a couple swimming in the falls, I had the place to myself. The falls themselves were beautiful, but it was distracting to have all the rubbish of buildings (including urinals) just lying everywhere. I wandered across some rickety bamboo bridges to get to the other side and was relieved that despite the creaking, they didn’t give way.

I decided against swimming here as hadn’t planned for it, but the rubbish was also a turn off. I headed back to the boat for a ride back to the car. In the upstream journey back I was passed by heaps of kayakers taking advantage of the strong current pushing them downstream.

Back in the car we briefly stopped at the high speed train station about 30mins out of town that links to the capital and China. The train makes it much quicker to get around Laos. In town we stopped at a stupa on a hill to get a view of the town as well as a craft store and tinsmith. The crafts aren’t really my thing, but kinda interesting to see them weaving scarfs.

Back in town I picked up my laundry (got to love going home with a clean suitcase), farewelled my driver, Ou, and chilled out knowing I’d want to come back to this after of the world again and explore some more.Read more