Experience the best of Pakse

Pakse stands at the meeting of the Mekong and the Xe Don in southern Laos, a quiet river town of French colonial shophouses, markets and temples, founded by the French in the early twentieth century. A large golden Buddha looks over the town from a hill, and the Champasak Palace, built in the colonial era for a Lao prince, stands beside the road.

Wat Phou, a Khmer temple complex on the slopes of a mountain at Champasak, about forty kilometres to the south, is a World Heritage site. East of Pakse, the Bolaven Plateau is a cool upland of coffee and tea plantations with waterfalls such as Tad Fane and Tad Yuang. Further south, the Four Thousand Islands scatter across the Mekong near the Cambodian border, with the broad Khone Phapheng falls at their southern end.

Lao coffee grown on the plateau is strong and sweet, and meals are built around sticky rice, grilled fish from the Mekong, larb, a minced meat salad, and papaya salad. After the rains of May to October, the plateau stays green into the cool, dry months.