From Pakse I was looking into another trip out for a couple of days to the nearby Bolaven Plateau, although I couldn't find a safe and affordable way of doing it. The Bolaven Plateau is a large area home to waterfalls, ethnic minority villages, and coffee plantations, most popularly explored by motorcycle. With everything very spread out and parts of it reaching up to 1300m altitude cycling was out of the question. It was possible to use public buses although they ran pretty randomly, and I did consider hitchhiking, but in the end I decided to give it a miss. To be fair as I've said before its currently the worst time of the year to see waterfalls with them at there driest.
I therefore headed south to Si Phan Don, which translates literally as the 4000 Islands. Si Phan Don is where the Mekong stretches up to 14km in width, and becomes unnavigable due to series of rapids and waterfalls which run between the countless islands in the section of the river. Whether there is 4000 islands or not is a different matter, but there certainly is a lot. There were several different islands it was possible to visit and I decided to stay on Don Det which seemed like the most popular island with backpackers. The bus ride down to Nakasong, home of the boat landing was nice and straight forward. From there it was then a short boat ride out to Don Det, arriving by lunchtime.
Don Det was only a small island, probably about the same size as Brownsea, and I soon checked into my accommodation where I literally had my own wooden bungalow with a double bed! The infrastructure on the island was pretty basic though, although it had a very hippyesque vibe. I spent the afternoon just relaxing, with my bungalow having a hammock on my balcony. What I most enjoyed though was having a double bed, although there was a massive thunderstorm in the night which created a racket on my corrugated roof!
On Friday I explored Don Det. There wasn't really much to see because it's the kind of place equipped for relaxation, but I did a lap of the island which took me a good couple of hours and got some good views of the Mekong and some of the outlying islands. After lunch I explored the middle of the island which was dominated with paddy fields, as well as the remains of an old railway line and port which was very interesting to read about despite little physical evidence of its existence. I spent much of the rest of the afternoon in the town section at the northern end of the island which had the bulk of the bars and restaurants, finding a nice place to chill and before watching the sunset later on. It was just nice to relax.
On Saturday I went and visited the neighbouring island of Don Khon, which was connected to Don Det by a bridge which used to be part of the old railway line. The railway line was built by the French in the late 19th century who had back then gained a particular stronghold on places like Vietnam and Cambodia which lie on the Mekong. The Frenches ambition was to continue their dominance northwards into China, using the Mekong as a way of increasing trade. The one thing stopping them was the rapids and waterfalls in Si Phan Don, so they decided to build a railway line across Don Khon, bridge across to Don Det, and continue across Don Det with a port either end to transport boats across, hence bypassing the waterfalls. It worked on the short term, although trade wasn't as big as they envisaged and by the 1930s the railway was abandoned.
First stop of the day was Li Phi Waterfall, which was situated on the western side of Don Khon. The sheer amount of water cascading down was very impressive, and there even a small beach area where you could sunbathe and go for a swim. After checking out another beach area nearby, I followed the old railway line to Ban Hang Khone village at the southern extremity of the island. There were great views south here looking down into Cambodia, although I wasn't lucky enough so see the incredibly rare Irrawaddy Dolphin which are occasionally seen south of the waterfalls.
Next stop was the Khone Pa Soi Waterfall, which I accessed via this track through the jungle. There were some relics from the railway line here with some of the old rail tracks used as these incredibly sketchy bridges. The waterfall itself was accessed across an equally sketchy set of suspension bridges, where there were several vantage points to see the rapids and waterfalls. I then headed back to the bridge connecting Don Khon to Don Det, walking along the street with the bulk of Don Khons restaurants and accommodation, as well as checking out the remains of an old locomotive. I got back to Don Det by early afternoon, where I just chilled out before catching a ferry back over the mainland to prepare myself for the border crossing into Cambodia the following day.
One of the reasons I stayed the night on the mainland instead of Don Det was so that I could visit the Khone Phapeng Waterfall before reaching the border, and also before the ticket office at the falls opened. The border was about 15km from Nakasong where I was staying, and the waterfall was about half way between there and the border. I therefore walked, and it was another pretty impressive waterfall, apparently the largest by volume in South East Asia. The boards at the waterfall even claim it is the largest in the world by width, which is strictly true if you account the width of the Mekong and all the waterfalls in that section of river, but that's a pretty audacious claim. It was definitely worth the early morning visit before facing the border crossing as I knew it was likely to be a long day!
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