We leave Vang Vieng after eating a delicious baguette for the first time in 7 months, the French have really left their traces here. The next destination is the Bolaven Plateau. Pakse is the second biggest city in Laos and is often used as a base to explore this area. We read on our travel-app however, that it’s an expensive city and that there is really nothing to do there. The app talks about a small village, Tad Lo, named after the waterfall there, located just on the edge of the plateau.

Along the Way

We can’t reach Tad Lo on the same day. Along the way, we stop to spend the night in Hin Boun. The next morning we leave early so we should reach Tad Lo in the early afternoon. After a few hours, the sky begins to look grey and we are rewarded with a short, light rain shower. It has been hot today, so this is actually quite welcome. We take a shortcut along a good side road but after an hour we arrive at a place where it clearly had been raining harder. The track has become a mud-road and there are big puddles every two minutes.

Now the Fun really Starts...

We hear from a local that the road will be like this for 10 km more, but we don’t back down. It’s already late and the way back isn’t that easy as well. What follows is four hours of slogging: Kitty walks the biggest part of it and Kevin has a lot of trouble keeping the sliding bike straight. What a relief, the moment we are back on tarmac. Eventually, we enter Tad Lo in the evening and we see immediately that this is a charming village. We find a nice bungalow and pay for two nights. There appear to be two waterfalls here, and in the morning we go check out the first one. Apparently, this one lies just around the corner. It’s quite an impressive one and we enjoy the view. There’s no entrance fee and it’s easily to be seen from the road. Around noon it starts to rain and we enjoy the coolness on our balcony. After the rain, we go look for the second waterfall. We find it after a few kilometres walking, following the signs on a small track. It appears to be a similar waterfall as the first one, only the surrounding is different with a more jungle-like feeling. For us, these waterfalls don’t have the beauty as the one in Luang Prabang for example, but they make up for this with their size.

The first and Second Waterfall

The village feels more authentic than the previous touristic places in Laos. There are many small wooden houses and there is also livestock running everywhere. There are some tourists here, and you will find everything you need here like hotels and restaurant.

A snapshot of the Village

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