Tour around Pakse….26\1

Saturday 26th January…..(or 25th)
Well, we’ve had a great day. A tour around the Bolevan Plateau, near Pakse, central Laos. A relaxing day spent with our driver taking us to some great waterfalls, a visit to a coffee plantation and a village known for their skilled weavers producing scarves, bags etc etc.
It’s been a very warm day and we are glad to take a day off cycling.
The coffee of Laos is a bit unpredictable. Sometimes you get what is probably similar to that produced by Baldrick in the Blackadder Goes Forth sketch. Other times it tastes how coffee should…beautiful. The coffee beans are in the process of being harvested at present and some are being dried ready to be roasted…..Chris seemed to enjoy the day despite having a cough, he sells coffee beans as a sideline in the UK.
Laos has, as per the Carlsberg advert, probably got the finest waterfalls in the world. Each one is different. One was very high, one was visited by a group of buddhist monks on a day outing and they climbed up into the flowing waters. Some great photos, I hope!
Tonight we hope to meet up with a local tour guide who is a ‘friend of a friend’ from the UK. We hope to get some useful information for the coming days. Tomorrow we ride to Champasak for a day or two before carrying on south towards an area known as the Four Thousand Islands. Can’t think why!
Our only problem may be the dust on the road and the extreme heat. We are drinking water like fish and wearing bandanas for the foreseeable future….
Anyway, photos to follow shortly (specially for Mrs Curtis, Georgia’s geography teacher)….