Pakse and the Bolevan Plateau

Condom boxes and cockroaches notwithstanding, my trip to the Bolevan Plateau turned out to be really pretty cool. Although I had initially intended to motorbike around the area for a few days, that plan was scuttled as soon as I realized that my possibilities for accomodations may have peaked out with the evening at the Sekong Souksamlane. Instead, I got up early the next morning and spent an entire day picking my way along dirt roads and through dusty villages all the way back to Pakse.

The Bolevan is indisputably beautiful - rising over 3000 feet above the Mekong plain to the west and the Vietnamese border to the east, it is covered in old-growth tropical forests, clear-running rivers, huge waterfalls, and remote villages. It also happens to hold the record for being one of the most heavily bombed areas in the history of warfare - which goes a long way towards explaining the lack of development. UXO (unexploded ordnance) is still a huge problem, as are the lingering effects of defoliants like Agent Orange. Nixon's attempts to disrupt the Ho Chi Minh trail which ran through the province were both amazingly destructive and ultimately futile. Needless to say, I stuck to the main roads.

If the Bolevan has anything going for it besides the spectacular scenery, American scrap metal, and occasional tiger (really), it's the coffee farms that cover its slopes and valleys. Some of the world's finest, and most expensive, coffees are grown here - the legacy of colonial French planters. The coffee farms are going strong today, mostly owned and operated as small family plots, and nearly every home I passed was surrounded by coffee beans drying in the sun on raised racks or tarps on the ground. In one small town, I stopped at a wood framed shop adorned with Tibetan prayer flags blowing in a surprisingly chilly breeze - mostly because the prayer flags seemed so out of place. Immediately a cheerfully caffinated Dutch guy named - seriously - "Koffie" came out to greet me. A self-described coffee freak, Koffie had given up his life in Holland a few years ago to settle in a small town in northern Thailand. After a road trip to Laos, he had met, fallen in love with, and eventually married the daughter of a local coffee grower (seemed a little convenient to me, but hey, love is what it is). This was her shop, he was quick to tell me. She ran the show, while he designed and led educational coffee tours ("from plant to cup") on his new, VERY extended, family's farm.

Koffie turned out to be an amazing guy and, over the freshest pot of Dutch-brewed coffee I've ever had (ok, the only pot of Dutch-brewed coffee I've ever had), we sat on his front porch and chatted about everything from the intricacies of coffee growing, roasting, and brewing to his new life as a member of a big Lao family in a small Lao town. Koffie has been, by far, one of the most interesting and hospitable people I've met on my travels and it was a bit of a bummer to part ways when a new group of coffee-touristas showed up. At any rate, I grabbed a kilo of fresh roasted (like that morning fresh roasted) coffee beans before heading back down the plateau to Pakse - a good way to cut the funk my backpack has developed over the past two months. Anyway, here's my plug for Koffie. Check out: www.paksong.info