Pakse

The main gateway to southern Laos — around 90,000 people where the Xe Don river meets the Mekong. The town is young: the French founded it in 1905 as an administrative post, while the historic capital of the Champasak principality sits 45 km downriver. Pakse itself is more of a transit stop than a spectacle, but it is the one convenient base for the three main destinations of the south: the Bolaven Plateau with its coffee and waterfalls, the temple of Vat Phou at Champasak, and Si Phan Don, the "four thousand islands" of the Mekong.

The main sights

• The Bolaven Plateau — 1,000–1,350 m above sea level and the country's main coffee region. A cool microclimate, red volcanic soil, arabica and robusta plantations and dozens of waterfalls. The standard way to see it is a motorbike loop over two or three days.
• Tad Fane — a twin waterfall around 120 m high dropping into a forested ravine; the plateau's picture-postcard sight.
• Tad Yuang — a fall of some fifty metres, with a path along the stream and a swimmable pool at the bottom.
• Tad Lo — three cascades in a row and the most relaxed backpacker hub on the plateau, the place people end up staying an extra day.
• Vat Phou — a UNESCO site 45 km from Pakse, at the foot of Phou Kao mountain. A Khmer temple complex and a precursor of Angkor: a shrine has been recorded on this spot since the 5th century, while the surviving buildings date from the 11th to 13th.
• Champasak — a sleepy village on the Mekong beside Vat Phou, with colonial houses and the memory of its own principality.
• Si Phan Don ("four thousand islands") — the river archipelago on the Cambodian border. The inhabited islands are Don Khong, Don Det and Don Khon, the last two linked by an old French railway bridge. People come here mainly to do nothing in a hammock.
• Khone Phapheng — the largest waterfall in Southeast Asia by volume of water, right on the Cambodian border. It is not a sheer drop but an enormous rapid down which the Mekong falls in steps.
• Tad Somphamit (Li Phi) — a turbulent waterfall on Don Khon, half an hour's walk from the guesthouses.
• The Irrawaddy dolphin — boats used to run out to the pool off Don Khon where the last Lao group held on. The final individual died in February 2022, and the species is considered extinct in Lao waters; dolphins occasionally come up to the border from the Cambodian side.
• Wat Luang — the principal pagoda of Pakse, with a monastic school and a view over the Xe Don.

Food and prices

The cooking is Lao with a southern accent: laap (chopped meat with herbs), tam mak hung (fiery green papaya salad), Lao-style khao soi, coconut curry and mok pa — fish baked in a banana leaf. Lunch in a café runs $4–7, dinner in a restaurant $10–18 and a bottle of Beerlao $1.50. A litre of petrol is about $1, a tuk-tuk across town $2–5, a motorbike $7–10 a day and a boat out to the four thousand islands $5–8. Prices are as of 2026 and left in dollars, which is how travellers are usually quoted here. Drink the coffee on the plantation itself: Bolaven is where it is both grown and roasted.

Transport

Pakse International Airport (PKZ) is small, with Lao Airlines flights to Vientiane and a handful of regional routes. From Vientiane it is an hour in the air ($60–100) or an overnight bus. There is no railway here: the China–Laos high-speed line runs north to the Chinese border and does not touch the south of the country. The most popular overland entry is from Ubon Ratchathani in Thailand via the Vang Tao crossing, and buses come up from Cambodia across the border at Si Phan Don. Around the region the main way to move is a rented motorbike: the Bolaven loop takes three to four days.

When to go

November–March is dry and cool at 18–30°C, the best time to come. April and May run 35–40°C and the heat is punishing. The rainy season (June–October) puts the waterfalls at full flow but washes out the dirt roads on the plateau and floods parts of the islands. Bear in mind that up on the plateau, at around a thousand metres, it is always 5–8°C cooler than in the valley: you want a jumper in the evening.