Yesterday we arrived after dark at Muang Khong the largest
settlement on the largest of the 4,000 Islands lying in a reach of the Mekong
in the far south of Laos.
In my youth I was a talented sleeper, but somewhere on life's journey I mislaid the knack and now usually rise well before 6 o’clock. Lynne woke me around 5.30 with the words, ‘Come and look at the sunrise.’ Had she said that in 1975 ours might have been a short marriage but in 2015 I was merely surprised that I was not already awake.
Pulling on a pair of shorts I joined her on the balcony. The horizon glowed pink, orange and gold, colours picked up by the river on the far bank. The sun was yet to appear, but the sky was already fading from blackness to a blue that was reflected in the blue/grey slate of the water lapping the island’s shore.
Then the sun rose. The only camera we had left after the ‘Kong
Lor Disaster’ was hardly up to the job and these are the best we could
manage.
Just after sunrise, Si Phan Don |
Having heard rumours that as in Luang Prabang monks did a
begging run at 6 o’clock we wandered out to take a look. Although we spotted several monks the rumour proved
false, but it mattered little, six o’clock in
the morning is a lovely time. The freshly-minted morning folds you in a warm
embrace, the air is clean, the sun sparkles on the water and the day to come holds
infinite possibilities.
One of those possibilities was breakfast. Ging and his driver had been home to Pakse for
the night and conveniently arrived as we finished eating.
We packed our cases in the van and checked out. By 8 o’clock we were sitting in a small boat ready to investigate less routine possibilities.
We packed our cases in the van and checked out. By 8 o’clock we were sitting in a small boat ready to investigate less routine possibilities.
We set off down the channel between Don Khong and the river
bank, passing settlements…
Fisherman, Si Phan Don |
Slower moving Traffic, Si Phan Don |
Our destination, over an hour from Don Khong, was the confusingly named Don Khon, a small island but the second most developed of the (alleged) 4,000. As we approached we were passed by a couple of boy racers.
Boy racers, approaching Don Khon |
It was not the most comfortable of rides, the unpaved road was sometimes rutted and meeting a vehicle travelling in the opposite direction meant a visit to the hedge.
Somebody's coming the other way! The road to Ban Hang |
The road ends at the French port near Ban Hang where a
concrete platform looks out over placid pools stretching away to the Cambodian
border. These pools are home to several dozen Irrawaddy Dolphins. Despite their
name they are not true river dolphins, and very few live in the Irrawaddy -
most of the world’s 7,000 Irrawaddy Dolphins live around the coast of
Bangladesh. They regularly move into brackish water and a few populations have
gone the whole hog and moved up river systems to fresh water, the 80-90 surviving
in a 200km stretch of the Mekong being the largest such population. The use of gill-nets,
electricity and poison in Cambodia, have reduced their numbers and the damming
of tributaries on the Lao side has damaged their habitat so they are now
critically endangered.
Ging hired a canoe and we walked down what seemed an
over-elaborate slipway, boarded the boat and puttered out into the pool, the
long tailed-outboard being more than sufficient to scare off the dolphins. The
boatman ran us onto one of the many shoals, cut the engine and we waited and
watched.Placid pools, with Cambodia on the far side, south of Don Khon |
Nothing happened so we moved to more open water and waited and watched some more. I do not remember who saw the first one, Lynne, the boatman or Ging but it was certainly not me. I heard a hiss and the words ‘over there’ but I was sitting in the bow so could not see the pointing arm and the dolphin was long gone before I was looking in the right direction. This was repeated several times and I was becoming frustrated but eventually I was lucky enough to be looking in the right direction when I heard a snort and I saw a bulbous head, long back and small fin as a creature 1.5m long and the colour of the river breached the surface. In forty minutes or so we made about a dozen such sightings, none lasted longer than seconds and few were shared by two or more people. And did I get a photograph? Of course not, so I have borrowed one from Wikipedia.
![]() |
Irrawaddy Dolphin, photograph by Jean-Claude Durka borrowed from Wikipedia This photograph was taken a little further south near the Cambodian town of Kratié |
As we walked up from the landing stage one of my new shoes, the
ones I bought in Thakhek
only two days previously, fell apart. I paid only 55,000Kip (£4.50) but had hoped
they would last the week.
Walking up the over-elaborate slipway from the landing stage, Ban Hang, Don Khon |
As we ordered, I noticed the owner’s daughter setting off towards the village on her motorbike.
Lao coffee is strong and thick and strained through a muslin sack. Ours was served with the usual tin of sweet coconut milk gloop and, less usually, a bottle of glue. Ging appointed himself shoe repairer in chief - as a rich westerner I was far too important or incompetent to mend my own shoes (and the second of those is probably true).
Coffee and shoe repair, Don Khon |
After paying for coffee and glue we climbed back on the
tricycle with Ging on the pillion, survived an overtaking manoeuvre and turned
left towards the island’s western shore.
Leaving the bike at the end of the road we walked through bamboo thickets to the Somphamit (or Li Phi) Falls. The Falls are more rapids than waterfalls but show clearly enough why we came across the island rather than round it by boat.
The area of white water is huge and we could see only a
small fraction from the land. Li Phi mean Sprit
Trap as it was believed the bad spirits of the dead collected here as they were
washed downstream while the good spirits often became dolphins.
A small part of the Somphamit (or Li Phi) Falls |
In 1866 the Mekong Expedition left Saigon, charged with important scientific, mapping and diplomatic work but its primary purpose was to assess the river’s navigability.
At Phnom Penh they detoured up the Tonle Sap to Seam Riep to see the newly rediscovered Angkor Wat. Rapids in northern Cambodia provided their first problem, but then they saw Somphamit and the Khon Phapheng Falls (see later). They spent a week exploring the channels hoping to find some way to force a medium sized boat through, but it was impossible. Despite this disappointment the expedition continued upstream, through Vientiane and Luang Prabang to Yunnan in southern China and thence via the Yangtze to Shanghai and back to Saigon. The expedition was a major scientific success but an equally major economic disappointment.
The French did not give up on their plan. On the way back to
Ban Khon we paused at a relic of their heroic efforts to open up the upper Mekong.
I had wondered about the elaborate slipway down to the landing
stage. Now I learned it was the start of the only railway ever built in Laos
(until 2009 when the line from Bangkok was extended across the new Friendship
Bridge and a couple of kilometres into Lao territory). A 600mm gauge line was
laid in 1893. The track was removable and the trucks man-hauled the 4km to Ban
Khon village. A year later a permanent track was laid and a wood burning engine
brought up the river. As the water at Ban Khon was too shallow in the dry
season a bridge was built to Don Det island…
… and the now 7km long railway was upgraded to metre gauge.
Starting with a squadron of gunboats, steamers were brought in sections, loaded
onto the train, transported above the rapids and reassembled. The railway later
carried passengers and freight, remaining in operation until 1940. None of the
track survives but the road our motor-tricycle had plied between Ban Khon and Ban Hang was the
original railway alignment.
School built in colonial times, Don Khon |
The bustling centre of Ban Khon |
and across the main street
was a shop selling some of the biggest, roundest pineapples it has been my privilege to ogle.
Just cop an eyeful of those pineapples, Ban Khon |
Through narrow channels back to the eastern bank of the Mekong |
Just a small part of the torrent, Khon Papheng Falls |
Our last two nights in Laos would be in Champasak, over
100km to the north, so we set off back up Route 13. Laos’ French colonial
legacy raises its head in unexpected ways, baguettes, pastis, boulodromes
and the red topped kilometre stones familiar to anyone who has driven across
France - or across Laos.
French style kilometre stone, Route 13 |
After an hour and a quarter we detoured down a side road
towards the village of Houei Tomo (or Houaytomo) and the temple of Oup (or Oum)
Mong (or Muang or Muong) which was rediscovered in the early 20th century. There is no agreed transliteration from Lao to
English and multiple spellings are common.
A short walk from the road in a patch of woodland near the river is a 13th or 14th century Khmer temple. Probably built as a resthouse for visitors to the much larger Wat Phou (next post) it may be late Khmer, but there is very little left, mainly moss covered stones among the trees....
A short walk from the road in a patch of woodland near the river is a 13th or 14th century Khmer temple. Probably built as a resthouse for visitors to the much larger Wat Phou (next post) it may be late Khmer, but there is very little left, mainly moss covered stones among the trees....
Oup Mong, moss covered stone among the trees |
Oup Mong - on remaining recognisable building |
We had the place to ourselves, and as such it is
atmospheric, but there was little to see and much work for archaeologists when
they get round to this site.
Oup Mong, much work for archaeologists |
We left Route 13 and made our way down to a small ferry, where we crossed the river while Ging and the driver returned to Pakse for the night.
Part 5: South from Vientiane
Part 9: Around the Bolaven Plateau
Part 10: Si Phan Don (4,000 Islands)
No comments:
Post a Comment