Thirty-six Degrees in Ubon Ratchathani

After what transpired in Pakse, we had looked forward to going back to Thailand, and to relative development. A mostly unchanging panorama of green unfurled as we gazed out of the bus on the three-hour journey from Pakse to Ubon Ratchathani. The last half-hour, however, saw cultivation replaced by construction, each successive building encountered en route seeming to get taller and more vehicles on the road than animals by its sides. Pakse, that sleepy city in Laos which is also its fourth largest, made Ubon Ratchathani look like a metropolis.

Below: the unexpected highlight of our visit to Ubon.

At the immigration checkpoint, we were reminded that borders are simply arbitrary, imaginary lines made permanent only by conviction. There wasn't even a fixed border. Skirmishes in the late 1980s between Thai and Lao forces further north precipitated the establishment of a commission to resolve the border dispute. Nearly three decades on, the lines are, literally, still being drawn.

Northeastern Thailand: a very brief history

The city of Ubon Ratchathani is part of the wider region of Isan, coterminous with northeastern Thailand, which comprises nearly a third of both Thailand's land area and population. Here, Central Thai vies to be spoken with Khmer and Lao, to the last of which the majority Isan language is closely related. It reflects the three-way contestation for political dominance of previous centuries in this part of the country.

In the wake of Khmer decline from the thirteenth century onwards, Lao influence under the Lan Xang Kingdom held sway in the region. The steady growth of Siamese power in turn fed on Lan Xang's decline, which later split into the Kingdoms of Luang Prabang, Vientiane and Champasak. The city of Ubon Ratchathani was founded in the late eighteenth century by Lao princes fleeing southwest from the post-Lan Xang chaos. The irruption of French colonialism a century later posed a new challenge. It was in response to French policies on the other side of the Mekong that Siam and later Thailand worked to secure the loyalties of the Isan peoples through policies designed to entrench their identification with being Thai. Today, the level of development continues to lag behind the Central Thai provinces, and the area is seen as a cultural backwater. Isan identity has also become embroiled in Thailand's recent political wrangling, with even talks of secession surfacing.

Below: We imagine many things - lines on earth being one of the more enduring ones.

Ubon Ratchathani: Cursory Glances

Our plan for the half-day we had in Ubon Ratchathani was to spend half of it sightseeing, and another half in the mall. We didn't stray far from Thung Si Muang, the little park in the city centre just across the road from Hotel Ratchathani where we stayed. A 45-minute walk took in the City Pillar Shrine, the Candle Monument and Wat Thung Si Muang. At the last-named landmark, our itinerary withered under the unrelenting 36°C-day. Mary was visibly vexed, and we quickly hopped into a taxi for the mall.

Below: The City Pillar Shrine, erected in 1972, housed the, well, City Pillar. In Thailand, these have come to form part of the sacral architecture intended to cement ties between Bangkok and the provinces.

Below: The Candle Monument, completed more recently in 2000, commemorates the annual Candle Festival held in the city. This marks the advent of Khao Phansa, the annual monks' rainy season retreat. Traditionally, the villagers presented candles to the monks as lights to aid their prayers and reading.

Below: East of Thung Si Muang stands Wat Thung Si Muang, built to house a replica of the Buddha's footprint. The grounds also contain a wooden library raised on stilts in the middle of a lily-filled pond, constructed thus to prevent crawling insects from getting to the precious manuscripts.

Our visit to the mall coincided with a pet fair, which we smelt long before we saw. There was the usual assortment of puppies, kittens, rabbits, hamsters and turtles, as well as a not so typical supporting cast of raptors, prairie dogs, marmosets and a lone squirrel monkey. For us, the undoubted stars of the show were the two binturongs who made special appearances later in the afternoon.

The animals were disarmingly adorable, but the double standards involved were not lost on us. Nearly all the creatures were caged. Perhaps many of these never knew a life beyond bars, and were happy to snuggle and scamper about to the delight of on-lookers. Several others looked as though they could never know contentment until they were freed. Their responses to restriction ranged from resignation, to restlessness, to rage. It was heart-rending. After playing Groot to the binturong's Rocket, I had gushed to Mary about how we should have one at home. The thought, however, that a cub may be torn from its mother's breast killed any such intentions.

Above (top to bottom): Caged predicaments, from contentment; to resignation; to restlessness; to rage; to regality; to utter indifference. Also note how human primates (marmoset and squirrel monkey, second and third from top) and rodents (the prairie dog, fourth from top) actually can be, with their doleful eyes and nimble figures.

Below (top to bottom): My favourite animal (binturong), perched atop my wife's favourite animal (me); Central Plaza, Ubon Ratchathani, looking a bit like Noah's Ark on the thirty-ninth day.

Below: Leaving Ubon Ratchathani International Airport, which, like several other Thai airports in the region, were once upon a time used as staging grounds in the American effort to render Laos the most bombed country on earth.

The binturongs were the highlight of a short day, and could vie with the spectacular Mekong waterfalls to be the most memorable experience on this trip. On our taxi back from the mall, close to eight in the evening, we passed a bustling couple of night markets. It was a far cry from Pakse, where street life ebbed with the light of day.

Pakse and a Lesson Money Can't Buy

With the sightseeing in Laos all wrapped up, we returned to Pakse. If nothing untoward had occurred, we would have been taking a nice unhurried stroll in the city, where we were based for a night before returning to Ubon Ratchathani the following morning.

But something had happened.

Below: Hotel Transylvania. No, that's giving Transylvania a bad name. The Champasak Palace Hotel in Pakse - good views from the top, but bad reviews otherwise all the way to the bottom. You can get better views and service from the Pakse Hotel in the middle of town.

Theft in Champasak Palace

Four days had passed since we first checked into the Champasak Palace Hotel. There, right under our noses and without us realising until two days later, our money was stolen. We had returned from dinner at the hotel restaurant when we saw that one of the doors (there were three, two of which were previously locked and not used) to our room was ajar. Ostensibly, our valuables were still physically present. Unbeknownst to us, somebody slipped in and away with a part of the Singapore dollars, Thai baht and American dollars which we brought.

When we realised at check-out about the theft, we had a bus to Pakse to catch. Perhaps we should have taken the matter up immediately with the hotel management, or even with the police. We didn't, though. Looking on the bright side, our itinerary wasn't derailed by dishonesty. We later found out, when we took any action at all, how dismally little would have been accomplished even if we had reported the matter immediately.

We knew we couldn't get back the money. But we hoped to secure a police report for insurance purposes. When we returned from Si Phan Don, we opted to stay at the Pakse Hotel in the centre of town. This was an infinitely better choice. Some helpful individuals we spoke to quickly dispelled any residual notion we had of the police force's effectiveness in those parts. We arrived at Pakse Hotel at 4 pm - we were told the police were unlikely to be there from 3.30 pm. How about early the next morning, we asked, just before catching the bus back to Ubon? Impossible, too. The police have to investigate first before issuing any report. This could take a week or more, and the actual issuance of a report would depend on how much money is going the other way. Amidst the uncertainty, we managed to arrange a meeting with the hotel's Managing Director, who said there was nothing he could do - given the number of days that have passed and the fact that our money wasn't in a safe.

So what has this taught us? Firstly, that we never should have let our guard down. The level of a hotel's security is never commensurate with its level of classification. The second, after we shared this experience on online travel forums, was not so much a lesson as a reminder. While these forums are excellent sources of information, sometimes they turn out to be gladiatorial arenas. There were a number of responses which provided useful suggestions on how the theft which we encountered could have been prevented. There were also an inordinate number of "why on earth did you", "did you expect" and "you should". Well, we were thankful that neither our passports nor the rest of our cash were taken. We also thought twice about appreciating the tender mercies of thieves.

Below: better views from Le Panorama Restaurant on the seventh floor of Pakse Hotel (globetrotting lizard included).

Sights and sounds, and a dash of history

And so sightseeing in Pakse was curtailed, and the day marred, somewhat. We took a wander from late afternoon, but couldn't see a lot as day waned and the streets emptied. Given the faded facades which dominated the streetscape, we felt like archaeologists unearthing and piecing together fragments of a mosaic. A few of these fragments stuck in the mind - the prevalence of Chinese and Vietnamese influence in the city and the ubiquitous Hammer and Sickle which invariably accompanied the display of each Lao national flag.

Above (top to bottom): the ubiquitous Hammer and Sickle aside nearly every Lao national flag - one sometimes forgets Vietnam isn't the only nominally Communist state in ASEAN; the Chinese Society Building in downtown Pakse, a reminder of Chinese involvement in regional colonial enterprises.

Below (top to bottom): Getting around in Pakse; one last glimpse of the Mekong, en route to Ubon.

Pakse was founded in 1905 by the French as an administrative centre. The Chinese and Vietnamese influx was a product of the city's colonial origins. Many Chinese, like those elsewhere in Southeast Asia, hailed from the southern Chinese provinces, who arrived in southern Laos after sailing first to Thailand, Cambodia or Vietnam.

The Vietnamese were brought in by the French to support the colonial administrative edifice, as some Indians were by the British to run their own colonial possessions. Later, Vietnamese influence extended also to nationalist politics. The Pathet Lao, a leftist group which came to power in 1975 with victory in the Lao civil war, was a child of Vietnamese clout and support. (We observed both facts in the flesh in the Vietnamese-run Dao Lin Restaurant, where the portrait of Ho Chi Minh gazed benevolently on patrons - they serve pretty good food too, I must add.) The Hammer and Sickle that fly today next to the Lao national flag harked from that year, when the Lao People's Democratic Republic was proclaimed, and the monarchy abolished.

With the years of relative stability and the number of companies today that are investing in the area, it is hard to argue that Laos has seen better days. But the crumbling infrastructure stands witness to long decades of strife between the pre-Second World War 1930s and the conclusion of the civil war in the late 1970s.

In a sense, Champasak Palace Hotel represents what Laos seems to have become today. It was literally meant to be a palace. War thought otherwise, and drove its resident potentate out of the country. Today it remains a pretty building with some disappointingly unpretty standards - a palace with its heart broken by misplaced youth, and its spirit sapped by middle age.

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.