The Two Faces of the Mekong River

The stories of the Mekong River and of modern Laos cannot be told separately. It was, in fact, to see the river that we visited southern Laos' famed Si Phan Don. The name translates into 4,000 Islands, the uncountable number of which are scattered like gems in the Mekong's girdle.

Below: Mighty and meek flows the Mekong in southern Laos.

A three-hour bus ride took us from Pakse to Ban Nakasang, where pirogues chugged towards the popular river islands of Don Det and Don Khon. We immediately recalled our last journey in a developing country by boat transfer - it felt like a delivery, for how we were packed like cargo and the very fact that we got off safe and sound at all. But the slender Laotian pirogues made the Guatemalan speedboats look like cruise liners.

The boat let us off on the northwestern shore of Don Khon, where our hotel Sala Don Khone was. We had paid for a floating bungalow for our two nights there. This was literally a bungalow moored just off the bank. Bridged by a makeshift wooden gangway, the structure bobbed slightly when the wake of passing pirogues lapped its edges. I spent half the nights worrying whether the rainy season would be unleashed as we slept, and whether or not our bungalow would be carried away by a torrent. I shouldn't have worried, of course - they fitted the place with lifejackets. Paranoia aside, the views were fantastic, especially of brooding sunsets blending aubergine sky and mauve river. Nightfall merged sky and river into pitch and brought forth infernal hordes of flies which swarmed around whatever lights remained.

Below (top to bottom): pirogues on the Mekong at Nakasang, from where travellers are ferried to the islands of Don Det and Don Khon; our floating lifejacket-equipped bungalows.

The Mekong eases disarmingly through much of this region. But at its southern edges, the river is channelled through a series of narrow, rocky drops and attains elemental force. The sets of rapids most accessible to tourist are Li Phi Falls on the western shores of Don Khon, and the Khone Phapheng Falls 13 kilometres south of the island. In these places, the river roars and its previously placid green plaits roil in an implacable white tumult.

Below: Li Phi Falls. The name Li Phi translates into spirit trap, and the falls are thought to catch the spirits of deceased people and animals floating from upriver. Here the Mekong churns a series of narrow rocky channels before resuming its unhurried passage just before the Lao-Cambodian border, where it calms again. There, sun-starved travellers, many of them westerners, lounge by the river beaches exposed during the dry season.

As had been mentioned, the genesis of modern Laos with its French colonial imprint is bound inextricably with the Mekong. When the French acquired Saigon (today's Ho Chi Minh City in southern Vietnam) in 1860, they looked with envy on Singapore which commanded the maritime gates to both China and India and on Shanghai which dominated the Yangtze River. French colonial officials dreamt of Saigon as the Shanghai of the Mekong, a potential gateway to China through the Chinese southwest. They knew little of the Mekong's passage, and French expeditions soon learnt about Khone Phapheng, which ships could not pass. The Mekong imperial dream was thus shelved for ten years.

In the late 1870s, however, as the French sought to rebuild national prestige following their damaging defeat in the Franco-Prussian War, control of the Mekong territories (as much of Laos today was known back then) came into focus once again. To counter Siamese claims of sovereignty and co-ethnicity with the area's inhabitants, French colonial officials played up fact that the Lao constituted a separate ethnic group from the Siamese, and thus set themselves up conveniently to protect the Lao from overbearing Siamese overlordship.

Today, Laos (as do the other riparian states) still have dreams for the Mekong. Like what China has accomplished upstream, they want to borrow the river's power by building a dam across a channel to the east of Don Khon. This would reduce the flow of the Mekong, and the level of both Li Phi and Khone Phapheng Falls. Crucially too, it cuts off the only year-round upriver fish migration route, with grave consequences for their spawning and for the fishery on which so many river folk depend for their livelihood. The urgency to see the falls in their pristine condition was increased when the Lao government announced the commencement of construction earlier this year.

Below: Witness the power of the Mekong at Khone Phapheng, and how lusty we are as a species for this power.

We earlier thought our arrival in the country would see the start of the rainy season, but the dry season still held on grimly, and temperatures reached 36 degrees Centigrade. On our way to both falls, the landscape we encountered was one of parched tautness. Cattle hurdled under the meagre shade of trees. Buffalo immersed themselves in dwindling pools, heedless of the wide world beyond. Even the air was still. The heat cauterized instantly any intention to stir.

The river was the only thing that dared to move. At both Li Phi and Khone Phapheng Falls, although we stood at a safe distance, we felt the Mekong's frenzied breaths as it writhed, twisted and crashed its way south. There was little to separate the two falls. Li Phi is a more extensive, scattered set of rapids, which at no one point are visitors able to view in their entirety. Khone Phapheng, on the other hand, gathers its waters along a single front, which pours along an arc into a wide cauldron. It was almost like choosing between the sun and a starlit night. Both undoubtedly reveal their brilliance, but keen, almost harsh, in one and diffused in the other.

Below: Portraits of peace, augur of latent power. The river gives life, particularly to these fisherfolk who seem to receive it on sufferance.

The waterfalls were an outstanding display of Nature's versatility, showing both the might and meekness of the Mekong in the same breath. There is not the slightest hint of the river's incredible turn of speed just mere metres before Li Phi and Khone Phapheng Falls begin.

It seems our prowess as a species has grown, too. Two other things have also grown - regard for ourselves, and its absence for all other elements which do not obey our will. Waterfalls have been tamed and silenced before. It might not be long before the dream of a navigable Mekong to China becomes a reality, though not before both Li Phi and Khone Phapheng Falls are both irreparably crippled.

Now, if only some of the Laotians we met  had been honest people...

Note on logistics: We rented bicycles for 10,000 kip each to get to Li Phi Falls, a leisurely 2-kilometre ride along a stony path from Sala Don Khone. We carelessly paid 55,000 kip per person for admission to the falls, and later found out it was 25,000 kip. Khone Phapheng can be arranged, for a lump sum price of 250,000 kip as a half-day trip from Don Khon. A boat brings you out to Nakasang, from where the falls are a short fifteen-minute drive.

More than a Tad: Waterfalls on the Bolaven

It took us a while to finally get to Laos, both in terms of making the decision to come and in traveling to get here. Logistics was the primary obstacle. Laos, the only landlocked ASEAN member, is probably the only country in Southeast Asia without a direct budget flight from Singapore. Furthermore, we were thinking of visiting southern Laos, which would add to the journey - eight to ten hours by bus from the capital Vientiane and one hour by plane. What drew us to southern Laos was its waterfalls, and what made us come sooner rather than later was the possibility that the biggest of these waterfalls on our watchlist might disappear in five years (more on this in a later entry).

Pakse was a suitable hub. Eastwards rose the heights of the Bolaven Plateau - known for its coffee and many waterfalls. South of Pakse flows the mighty Mekong until it slips into the multiple emerald channels of Si Phan Don and tumbles into Cambodia over the Khone Phapheng Falls. We chose to get to Pakse via northeastern Thailand - first to Bangkok on a Friday evening Thai Airways flight, then early the next morning to Ubon Ratchathani, from where Pakse was a three-hour bus ride. Arriving in Pakse at noon, five and a half hours after leaving our hotel for Suvarnabhumi Airport that morning, we proceeded to sleep the rest of the day away.

On Sunday, we arranged for a vehicle and a driver to take us to the Bolaven. June was meant to herald the wet season, and indeed Google had forecast thunderstorms for the duration of our stay in Laos. Yet even as billowing white clouds extended across the horizon, it remained stickily sunny all day. Heaven gave no more than a promise of rain to come.

Tad Fan, the first on our itinerary, was the tallest waterfall. Its two streams emerge from the jungle and plunge into a cirque from a height of 120 metres. Coffee buses surround the approach to the main viewpoint, from where a smaller trail descended and led the intrepid to the top of the falls. But after El Salvador, Mary decided that intrepid was what we were not and we went no further. That forgettable memory aside, the upland scenery and coffee bushes reminded us precisely of El Salvador, where the soil was also volcanic in origin.

Below: Tad Fan brings back memories of Juayua in El Salvador, with which the Bolaven shares a similar coffee story.

Like in El Salvador, coffee has been the protagonist in the Bolaven story of recent times. The French first planted coffee on the Bolaven in the 1920s, and production grew steadily until disrupted by the Second World War. Peace when it came was the briefest of respites until broken again by the spillover of violence from the Vietnam War in the 1950s and 1960s. During this time, the eastern Bolaven hosted the Ho Chi Minh trail where North Vietnamese forces ferried arms and supplies to their communist brethren in the South. The American attempt to dislodge the North Vietnamese from the Trail saw the Bolaven become one of the most intensely bombed areas in the entire region. The postwar revival from the 1970s stuttered under collectivisation and price control, before liberalisation in the late 1980s and favourable global market conditions saw tentative growth return. Today, the threat to coffee production seems to come from the agglomerative anonymity of large plantations, mining and hydropower interests.

Tad Yeung, the second waterfall we visited, was the most elegant, falling gently like curtains over an escarpment. It also attracted the most visitors. We hadn't expected so many. While few Singaporeans have heard about the Bolaven, it seems everybody in northeastern Thailand knew about it. One middle-aged Thai lady who we exchanged pleasantries with even welcomed us to Thailand in an unguarded moment.

Below: Tat Yeung, which we shared with at least two busloads of Thai tourists. Welcome to Thailand, one of them, from Roi Et, even said.

Our next waterfall, Tad Lo, was the mightiest of the lot we saw that day. There were two main tiers to the falls, with a popular lodge situated in between (where we lunched) and various eateries in the vicinity. The lower tier was the widest, and had multiple stone ledges connected by bamboo ladders. But it wasn't the time to cavort just beneath the falls, for the flow was swollen by rains upriver which stained it an angry brown. We clambered over rocks to get a closer view, like many Laotians have before us. The evidence of their dalliance with the falls laid strewn around - empty bottles, styrofoam food containers, disused plastic snack wrappers - barely camouflaged by the midday sun's unrelenting glare. A dirt path led from the lodge to the upper tier. This one invited no horseplay, as the main falls powered noisily through a narrow channel in the rock and dropped sharply into a thick brown broth. We kept a respectful distance from a parallel vantage point.

Above (top to bottom): the lower tier of Tad Lo; a group of youths negotiated the rapids and made it to one of the rock ledges, though not before one of their number slipped and was deposited mercifully on shore; the full width of the lower tier, as seen from the bridge further downstream.

Below: keeping a respectful distance from the thick brown broth that was the upper tier of Tad Lo.

Below: Visitors, especially younger ones, were intrigued by the presence of two elephants kept in the lodge for rides. As seems to be wont elsewhere in this region where elephants are kept in captivity, one could feed them for a fee. Our hearts were rent by their chains, which regret alone could not sever.

Tad Pha Suam, our last stop of the day, was the smallest but also the most thrilling. It tumbled on three sides into a basalt basin. The pool at the base of the falls supported a thriving fish population - we counted at least three Mekong catfish, each longer than a metre, during a feeding frenzy which ensued when a family threw in bread. As the river hadn't yet filled up, children splashed around on its upper reaches just before the falls. One could rock-hop all the way to the edge of this natural faucet, and dangle one's feet just above the heaving mass of water.

Above (top to bottom): Tad Pha Suam; a bridge of wood and rattan that led to the falls, excellent for those who like to feel their weight; spot the Mekong catfish.

Below: river critters.

And so a day's loop brought us back to Pakse. Crossing rickety one-way bridges spanning the many streams that criss-cross the plateau, we passed clattering motorcycles, pick-ups over-laden with villagers going to and coming from the city, either sitting or standing (one group was spotted accompanying a considerably-sized sapling which was presumably being transplanted elsewhere), fruit stalls (pineapples and durians seemed to be in season) and the entire cast of Old MacDonald Had A Farm. In the airconditioned comfort of our minivan, daily life in the Bolaven was presented as if in an Edwardian documentary, sans clamour, dust and reality.

It left our Sunday of waterfalls in a state of picturesque idyll.

A note on logistics: We were told by the staff at Champasak Palace Hotel that the usual Bolaven circuit cost US$70 and took in Tad Fan, Tad Yeung and Tad Pha Suam. Tad Lo could be added to this itinerary with an additional US$30. which we paid. A Korean duo we met later shared that they only paid 250,000 (the equivalent of about US$30) for their Bolaven day tour. It would not be the only time we were left aggrieved this time round by Champasak Palace Hotel, but more on that later.