When we arrived in Pakse, our guesthouse of choice was already full, so we took their recommendation for one just up the road - Sedone River Guesthouse (US$4, cold water, fan) down by the Sedon riverside. The rooms reminded me of a certain cow shed, but it was somewhere to sleep at least.

We booked ourselves on a tour up to the Bolaven Plateau the next day (US$14 each), with Saibaidy 2 Guesthouse (our first choice) . They do a day trip up their, but they're happy to drop you off in the small town of Tadlo for the night and pick you up again the next day (assuming there is a tour, otherwise there is a local bus back to Pakse).

Tour was really interesting, started off going to a tea plantation up on the plateau. The family that runs it moved to Laos from Vietnam over 60 years ago. Up on the plateau the weather is reasonable all year round, so they pick tea once a week during the rainy season and every other week during the dry season. Interesting to see how they dry tea and everything. Difference between red tea & green tea is just that red tea is fermented for 6 hours before roasting & tumbling. Not sure what they do for black tea, but all the different sorts come from the same bush - it's just the preparation that is different.

Then it was off to Tad Fane waterfall. Two falls really, with a drop of 120m. Pretty impressive, and fantastic nature all around.

That was followed by a short stop at a coffee plantation and the biggest shock of the trip. I've started drinking coffee again!!! Yes, it's true - after who knows how many years of abstinence, I'm back on it. Laos is well known for it's fine Arabica coffee, and even it's Robusta, for those with a little more refined taste. The french bought coffee here from Ethiopia way back when and it thrives here - especially just up on the Bolaven Plateau . And believe me it's great :) I'll give it up again after Laos, but I´m definitely enjoying it here. Nothing quite like a good coffee.

After that it was off to the day's second waterfall - Tat Yuang, where we got to swim (for the first time on the trip). Was the first time that Kristina has ever swum at the base of a waterfall, so she was well impressed. The fall itself was fairly impressive - quite like Hunua Falls, but maybe a third the size.

After lunch it was off to a tribal village to meet the locals. No touristy gimmicks, just straight into their daily life. Our guide (Larn from Sabaidy 2 - really good guy) has been going there for 2 years now, so they're used to him and don't mind people taking photos. It was quite weird, seeing traditional huts, tools and things, pigs and chickens scratching in the dirt under the huts, coffee beans lying out to dry, kids smoking bamboo pipes (just tobacco, but no filter or anything, and I really mean kids - like 5 or 6 years old), and then satellite dishes for their TV, bikes, t-shirts and so on. Quite a contrast. You can't expect them to be unaffected by contact with modern civilisations, but seeing a satellite dish outside a bamboo hut is quite weird.
The kids smoking thing was a bit scary too - in Cambodia we'd seem signs warning about the dangers of smoking, but haven't seen anything like that here. Larn told us that often the villages would get really bad coughs and things, and they'd do a deal where if they stopped smoking then the guesthouse would buy them medicine for it . But after a couple of days they'd start smoking again.

These days, the villagers make money from coffee, and they're not super poor (they have satellite TV after all), they just choose to live their tradtional lifestyle (more or less). They have a sort of school in the village, and a number of the teenagers from the village have gone to boarding school down in Pakse. Most of them that leave to go to school don't end up moving back to the village permanently though - guess they get a taste for modern life in the 'big city'.

Ended the trip at Tadlo (or Tat Lo), the third and final waterfall. Really beautiful here. Took a cheap, simple hut for 25000kip (about US$2.50) at Sai Lom Yen Guesthouse, same as on Don Det - mosquito net, double bed, 4 walls and a roof. Shared toilet & shower (although the shower thing didn't work, so it was just a bucket with water. I made like the locals and washed in the river instead). 

Next morning we took an elephant ride through the jungle to another waterfall (lots of those up here). That was really cool. Great way to travel - a mellow sedate pace, looking down on the world with. Hanged out at Tim's Guesthouse for the rest of the day - they work together with Sabaidy 2 for doing the overnight thing, and he called for us to make sure that there was a tour coming up and that they had a room for us. Got picked up at about 3 and headed back to Pakse.