Pakse: Exploring the Rainforest from the Air!

The journey from Don Khong on a rickety old bus was slow and frustrating but otherwise painless – until we were dropped off over 5km from Pakse, at a small village market square, meaning that we ended up paying not much less than we’d paid to travel all the way from Don Khong to cover this last stretch by an equally rickety tuk-tuk. On the plus side, this meant we could get dropped off at our hostel without having to walk with our heavy bags – a blessing in disguise in this heat! We checked in and headed straight back out to book our Tree Top Explorer trip with Green Discovery for the next day: http://www.greendiscoverylaos.com/treetop/treetop.html

We’d been looking forward to this for ages after hearing about how much fun George and James had when they were here! It promised to be two days of adrenaline-pumping action, and we couldn’t wait. After we’d wrestled the money from an ATM (accessing our money was proving harder than usual here!) we paid for our trip and hired a motorbike to enjoy what remained of the day.

We had a choice between exploring the town, or biking out to Champasak to explore the temple, Wat Phu. Feeling that we were missing the thrill of riding a bike, we decided to go to Wat Phu – after all, it is the most significant temple site in Laos. 

It was built in the 6^th century as a tribute to Shiva (though the main temple building was converted to a Buddhist sanctuary at a later stage), and it is also thought to be a precursor in design to Angkor Wat. On the way, we took the advice of Green Discovery and sought out a pair of decent trekking shoes for Bradley (I had some with me) – amazingly, we found a pair for the exact price quoted, which was a very reasonable £4 – a bargain for a barely used pair of walking shoes! It was so nice to go somewhere we’d been recommended, and to end up with what we’d been looking for, without a thorough haggle first.

It was a 28km ride out of town to Wat Phu, and Bradley couldn’t help driving rather fast on the fresh new road. The road network in Laos, where it exists, is relatively new, and makes travel much easier if you stick to the main road… but when we were nearly at Wat Phu, we had to take a back road, with holes as big as car tyres dotted all over the place. We made a mental note to leave before it got too dark, as otherwise we’d never find our way through here without daylight on our side to guide us to the main road…

When you arrive at the Wat Phu site, you have a choice between getting the electronic car to ferry you across to the temple, or you can walk the still paths and find it for yourself. Wat Phu is far less grand than many of the temples of Angkor, but what it lacks in grandeur it makes up for in beauty, thanks to the surrounding countryside. Avenues of frangipani trees lead you to the temple and decorate the hillside, creating a poetic backdrop, and at the top of the hill there is a beautiful vantage point from which to admire the valley below. 

Despite committing to memory a promise to leave before it got dark, we were pushing it a bit and ended up darting out of the car park as the sun began to set. We battled our way slowly through the terrifying holes in the road, grudgingly admiring all the locals whizzing through who clearly know exactly where to avoid, and managed to get on to the main road again before the sky had turned too black. We did then have to choose between getting flies in our eyes, or keeping our darkened and cracked visors down… but we made it back without incident. Feeling quite jittery from an adrenaline-fuelled ride back, we took a gamble on a lovely-looking Indian restaurant (the night before two days trekking in the jungle – gulp!) and fortunately it was delicious and completely agreeable to our toughened digestive systems! 

The next morning we were picked up bright and early for our two days in the jungle. We drove out to Bolaven Plateau with our fellow adventurers – as well as us, there were a Russian couple with barely a word of English between them (making it very challenging for the guides, but somehow rudimentary sign language sufficed!), three Swiss with embarrassingly excellent English, and an American guy. There was also another group of eight doing the three day trip – we’d see them at dinner time, and occasionally bypass their group when we were out and about.

Having been kitted out for Go Ape before, we knew roughly what to expect when it came to safety harnesses, but as well as all the usual clips and cables, we had a new addition – Blake! The Lao guides’ accents made the word ‘brake’ sound like ‘blake’, which was the source of much hilarity for the next two days! We’d never used any kind of brake at Go Ape, so the prospect of careering into trees at a sharp angle with just a wooden crook to slow you down was a little anxiety-inducing…

Bradley & Blake

Kerry & Blake

It was a gorgeous day, and we spent the morning trekking through the rainforest, delving deep into the pristine outdoors. 

We gradually made our way toward the ziplines and the tree-top village where we’d be staying that night, the terrain becoming damper and more slippery as we trekked on. We stopped for lunch before we began ziplining, our guides quickly collecting some huge leaves to lay our feast out for us. Their Mary Poppins-esque bags were filled with fish, rice, dried beef, roasted vegetables, an amazing tomato salsa, and boiled eggs. It felt brilliant to be eating such a lovely feast under the sun with our hands (if only I’d remembered the antibacterial hand gel, I couldn’t help thinking), and breaking off solid blocks of rice to scoop up the gooey bits. After this, we really started to relax into the great outdoors.

'Lunch!'

After lunch, we headed to our first zipline, to get used to the cables and the ‘blake’ on a couple of 'nursery slopes’. You can’t build up too much speed on these, but it helped us to know when to apply the brake – effectively, you pull down with the crook of the brake behind your zipline clip to slow your momentum.

 250m Zipline

 300m Zipline

300m Zipline

We had a brilliant time working our way through increasingly long ziplines… we ended up on cables over 400 metres crossing a canyon with an epic waterfall to our right, and a view for miles to our left… it felt as if we were coursing into oblivion on each of these long lines. Sometimes it was terrifying leaping off the platform and trusting your life to a steel cable, a harness and a piece of wood with a funny name, but it was so much fun that we all agreed to repeat the course of ziplines before dinner. Bradley managed to get some great videos as he went flying along the zipline – he’s braver than me, as I was quite keen to have both hands on the harness!

 

400m Zipline

 400m Zipline - Upside Down!

During the first round of the ziplines, we were all perfecting our technique and mastering the brake – sometimes we’d go whizzing way too fast toward the other side, and the guide would be shouting ‘blake!’ into the forest at us while the rest of the group gawped in laughter (or horror) at the approaching speedster… alternatively, being overcautious with your brake (as I often was after my first collision with a tree) could lead to you slowing to a stop before you even reached the end of the line, meaning that the guide (who had been shouting ‘no blake!’ at you for the previous ten seconds) would have to clip onto the steel cable and shimmy over to pull you back to the platform. By the second time round, most of us were figuring out the nuances of brake usage and calculating relatively well when to begin to slow down… but I must admit I was more often than not retrieved from thirty feet away as the cables got longer!

Look carefully...

Once we’d finished our exhilarating second tour of the ziplines, we landed at the tree top village, where we’d be spending the night. 

Tree Top Village

First though we had tea and coffee to warm ourselves up, and an excellent dinner cooked by the guides and some of their assistants who’d arrived before us. The tree top village was situated in a perfect location next to a pounding waterfall and with a lookout across the valley and the deeper rainforest below. 

 

 360 from the Tree Top Village

The village consisted of a restaurant/social area, and several small treehouses where we’d all be spending the night, plus a shower and toilet (with water from the forest stored and warmed naturally, and treated to remove any pollutants before it was then released back into the ecosystem). Each treehouse also had a bathroom with running water, which was very impressive! 

When we were all ready to go to bed (at around 9pm, the dark lulled us all to sleepiness) the guides escorted us to our treehouses – which we had to zipline into!

Our Own Tree House! 

It was only a short cable, but it was a lot of fun to think we were in our own little treehouse with only a cable to access it, a bit like having a penthouse suite in the jungle. The treehouses each had beds covered with mosquito nets and containing sleeping bags, so we were able to get nice and warm and stay protected from the biting forest inhabitants! 

We could hear the waterfall from the treehouse, and the sounds of the insects, and this quickly soothed us to sleep – one of the best night’s sleep we’d had in a while! I woke up in the night at one point and the moon was really bright and the stars looked so clear – it was beautiful.

The next morning we woke naturally and were able to relax in our treehouse for a while before the guides came to collect us for breakfast. We ziplined out of the treehouse and enjoyed a feast of bread, fruit and omelette, before we stepped back into our harnesses and prepared for another day in the forest. 

However, by the time breakfast was over, the sky was starting to look a bit cloudy… we were lucky to be able to enjoy a morning of dry ziplining, but by the time we made it back to the treehouse for lunch the heavens had opened and it began to pour with rain! We procrastinated a little bit but eventually it became clear that we’d need to head out into the rain after lunch. It became quite slippery on the rocky paths through the forest, and we found ourselves soaked within minutes, but the ziplining was still great fun (with the need for more braking on the wet cables!). However, the big test was the rock climbing planned for the afternoon. The rain was torrential by this point and everyone peered up the rock face with trepidation, even the toughest of us who’d been unfazed by the ziplines! We were part way out of the forest by the time we reached the rocks, so we were even more exposed to the elements – and a climb that would have felt a bit scary in dry weather took on a whole new character as we surveyed the ascent. Some of us exchanged looks that suggested we were all contemplating bailing out of this part, but in the end we all went for it – and although it may have been the scariest thing I’ve done in years, it was worthwhile – if only to prove I could face it! We were well clipped in, but a slip from the iron rungs in the rocks would probably have meant a broken leg, or maybe a broken jaw – nothing to feel too good about! We all made slow, careful steps and eventually we all made it – every successful climber got a massive cheer from the people who’d finished ahead of them – and there was a real sense of being part of a team after that experience! I could have cried when everyone cheered me over the last hurdle. So yes, as advertised, this trip could be a great team-building exercise… an excellent business investment!

The rest of the afternoon was spent trekking back to the small village where we’d started out the previous day. When we were about half way through this last stretch, the sun began to shine and attempted to dry out our clothes – though that didn’t last long as it soon started to pour with rain again! It was a pleasant walk despite the rain – which we’d all got so used to it was as if it wasn’t there, and there was nothing to keep dry by that point anyway so we’d embraced the fact that our feet were squelching in their wet shoes and socks, and our clothes were clinging on for dear life! When we reached the shelter of the starting point and stripped off our harnesses, we all celebrated a great couple of days with a beer (great idea, thanks Andy!) and dried off as best we could before a damp ride back into Pakse.

We’d had such a fantastic time and it felt a shame to end it there, so we agreed to meet for dinner at a restaurant near to our hostels a bit later that evening (after a shower!). The Russians headed straight off but we met our new friends Valentina, Andy and Rahel from Switzerland, and Ben from the US, and had a lovely meal before we had to say goodbye (they were all heading south, and we were heading north the next day). That’s the trouble with travelling – you can meet great people, and then realise you may never see them again! 

We were heading to Tha Kheak the next day (which is where Martijn and Pien had been heading for, but they would have been way ahead of us by now) so we retreated to bed fairly early, ready for the early start. Pakse was at the heart of some brilliant memories for us – Laos was proving to be even lovelier than we’d expected!

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