Pakse
Champasak Province, Lao

November 11 - 16

Located in the far south of Lao about 200 km north of Cambodia, Pakse is surrounded by many interesting things for tourists to do.

We came to see our friends Soulideth and Yu San and their daughter Yui. Yui is beautiful, and runs around a lot. We had fun hanging out and playing together.

We went to a local Emu and Peacock farm. It was way down a back road, and we had to stop for directions numerous times. The answer was always "Keep going straight, it's only another two kilometers." We passed a goat farm and winded back down the road about 20 kilometers.

We finally got to the Emu farm, though, and it was quite interesting. There are over a hundred emu on the grounds. Apparently, and I'm not too clear, the emu were donated to the governor of Champasak province, and he now raises them. The peacocks are the same story. I'm not sure what the emu are raised for (feathers, eggs, meat, fun?) but I guess if you want to buy one they cost $800 US. Unless you are a government official, and then the price is only $500.

We went to see a super beautiful waterfall down near the Cambodian border called Khone Pha Pheng. We had a wonderful lunch with a gorgeous view of the falls, and the sounds of the falls rushed past us. Yui was able to play in the water for a bit and found some nice shells.

Later that same day we went to look for the river dolphins. I never knew that dolphins lived in fresh water also, but apparently they do. The dolphins in the area are Irrawaddy (Orcaella brevirostris) dolphins and inhabit waters from the Bay of Bengal to the northern Australian coast. There are only a hundred or so left in the Mekong, and 10 or so left in the area. Though they didn't choose to bless us with their presence on that day the boat trip was well worth doing and the river was quite beautiful. The boat cost $6 and each person was 2,000 kip on top of that. See the above map for the location of the dolphins.

On Saturday, Khamphan took us to the Phone Phasuoam ('PH' in Lao sounds like a 'P', so it's PONE pa  SWAM, as in swami) waterfall. It's quite beautiful, and we could walk out on the rocks on the top side of the falls.

Khamphan is a proud new father of a little baby boy. He and his wife, Ang, show him off.

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