Back in Laos and have collected the camper from the garage. The temperature has eased from when we left for Japan, and is now a warm 20 degrees in the day and a pleasant 20 degrees at night.
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| Flooded Forest |
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| Camping by the Meking |
With two weeks to explore before we head home for Christmas we have headed east and south, initially along the main road to Cambodia - route 13, before cutting east through more stunning limestone scenery. Vertical cliffs rise from the flat paddy fields with jagged eroded summits etched against the sky. The whole area is riddled with caves, many only recently explored. We took a boat trip 7kms through the Khonglor river cave passing a cavern of illuminated stalagmites and Stalagtites, the rest of the journey being in complete darkness with the boatman only using a torch to identify the route. As it is the dry season we had to get out a few times to east the boat over shallow rapids. A fascinating experience. Following the road east then south we drove alongside a newly created reservoir, and saw the dramatic effect is has - thousands of bare tree trunks stood forlornly in the water where the jungle had been flooded. Laos is building many new dams, mainly to generate hydroelectric power which is used to service Laos ever expanding population, but also to export to Thailand and Cambodia.
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| Road across the Bolaven Plateau |
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| Village on Minor road |
Heading south we spent a night camped on the banks of the Mekong, and were visited by the local military who wanted to know what we were doing there, but did let us stay, before cutting east again along a more minor dirt road. This started well, but after a couple of villages the road deteriorated dramatically, leaving us to weave our way past car sized pot-holes created during the wet season. Thankfully we are now in the dry season and the road is passable with care. Villages were spaced regularly along the 60kms of road and it made us appreciate the difficulty the locals must have transporting their goods out to market.
Further south the underlying rock is sandstone creating beautiful waterfalls which surround the Bolaven Plateau, an area around 1300m high which is famous for its high quality coffee. We took the opportunity to visit a few of the waterfalls, where we met a group of students from the local college who were learning English so were very keen to practice on us. Eventually extricating ourselves (we would have been there all day) we also drove across the Bolaven Plateau to see the coffee being grown. The road here was even worst than the previous day despite it being the main artery to several large coffee plantations. We had read about an NGO which is working with local small scale farmers to train them to grow, process and roast their own coffee. The not for profit organisation then sells the coffee, both in its café in Paksan and to buyers abroad giving the farmers a better than Fair Trade price, thus improving their incomes. Any profits the NGO makes are used to provide education on sanitation, and clean water to schools in the area. The coffee was fantastic and we spent a long time chatting to the couple who run the scheme, and also learning about the coffee production process.
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| Coffee Beans on the plant |
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| Students studying English |
Now we are back at the Mekong at Champasak with just one more week here before returning to the UK for Christmas. It is strange to think it is 7th December and we have not heard a Christmas Carol nor seen much in the way of Christmas goods, only a couple of Christmas trees in Vientiane.
Further south the underlying rock is sandstone creating beautiful waterfalls which surround the Bolaven Plateau, an area around 1300m high which is famous for its high quality coffee. We took the opportunity to visit a few of the waterfalls, where we met a group of students from the local college who were learning English so were very keen to practice on us. Eventually extricating ourselves (we would have been there all day) we also drove across the Bolaven Plateau to see the coffee being grown. The road here was even worst than the previous day despite it being the main artery to several large coffee plantations. We had read about an NGO which is working with local small scale farmers to train them to grow, process and roast their own coffee. The not for profit organisation then sells the coffee, both in its café in Paksan and to buyers abroad giving the farmers a better than Fair Trade price, thus improving their incomes. Any profits the NGO makes are used to provide education on sanitation, and clean water to schools in the area. The coffee was fantastic and we spent a long time chatting to the couple who run the scheme, and also learning about the coffee production process. 
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