Mar 17 - Tat Lo - An early start from the Champasak hotel, and Cheryl was amazingly fully recovered from her food poisoning. I'd been really keen to use the first aid kit that I'd filled up in South Africa, and carried round Asia with us - repeatedly offering to dose her up with Ciprafloxin 250. Needless to say, she wasn't having any of it, and was looking 100 percent for the first time in a couple of days, which was a big relief.

We packed a small daypack with a couple of changes of clothing each, and secured everything else in our backpacks, which we left at the hotel, and by eight-ish, we were breakfasted and ready to go. I'd picked up a couple of helmets at the Lankham hotel, where we rented the bikes, but it became obvious as we put them on, that they were completely useless, rattling around our heads in the wind. We couldn't really find anything that fitted, so we just decided to leave them behind and go bare-headed, which was probably a bit stupid in hindsight; but no worse than wearing what they had available.

The daypack got crammed into the carry-basket at the front of the bike, we filled up with fuel, and set off for Tat Lo. To get there, we retraced the main route (13) east out of town; 13 is a road that basically runs north-south across the whole country, and it's in pretty good nick. We kept east, turning into route 16, where the roadside was lined with the same sort of shops, homes and businesses that we saw all over the rest of Laos - motorbike repair workshops, restaurants and small guesthouses squeezed in between family homes. People really seem to prefer living as close as possible to the roads, so there's a strip of intermittent development running on each side of route 16 for many kilometers as you leave Pakse. Fruit-stalls and dusty wooden shacks selling hand-pumped petrol from 44-gallon drums compete for road frontage with new cement-block shops and traditionally-built guesthouses. Every so often, you'll come across a colonial-era plot of land, circumscribed with a once-ornate wall or fence, with boundaries and buildings now mostly in a genteel state of crumbling disrepair, and I'd really love to have been a fly on the wall over the last thirty years, just to see how Laos has changed in that time.

As well as shops, there are all kinds of places to eat and drink, and almost every roadside bar and restaurant is covered in the bright yellow umbrellas, banners and posters provided by BeerLao, the state-owned beer company. It's one of the most ubiquitous brands in Laos; people here are strangely proud of it, although after some selfless experimentation, I'd have to agree with them that it's excellent beer!

About 21km out of Pakse (in fact, at the Lak 21 junction) we turned left onto route 20, heading up to Tat Lo. We were looking to stop off for lunch at a place called Utayan Bajiang Champasak, which is not signposted, so we followed the odometer-based directions in the Lonely Planet. We later found out that in the strange tradition of contradiction that is tourism in South East Asia, this is an Thai owned 'eco-lodge' constructed and furnished almost completely with old-growth teak from illegal logging. Anway, after driving around for about thirty minutes, we realised that either our odometer or their directions were we wrong (could have been either) so we gave it up as a bad job, and carried on through to Tat Lo.

It was sort of lunch-time-ish when we pulled in at Tadlo lodge, in Tat Lo. Transliteration of the Lao alphabet is carried out in a fairly relaxed way here (to be honest, that's true of most things in Laos), so the same Lao word or name is often spelled in a number of different ways. The lodge is built on the banks of the river, overlooking the pools and waterfalls (this particular set of falls is called Tat Hang). The basins below the falls are fairly deep, and they were filled with kids swimming and playing in the water. The five metre drop from rocks at the top was no problem for these little guys; some of them who looked to be two or three years old were casually hurling themselves off into the waters below. There was a little bit of litter (mainly the single use shampoo sachets that people bring down to wash their hair in the river - these are the bane of the environment in this part of the world), but the spot was actually really beautiful. We had a shower to wash off some of the red dust from the road journey, and headed up to lunch at the main restaurant.

Tadlo lodge is well laid out - it's clustered around the main falls, with bungalows on either side of the river, and a sort of open, but shaded, platform that serves as a bar and restaurant. We had a good lunch, and a much needed Beer-Lao to cool down after a few hours on the road in high-thirties temperatures. They'd been careful not to cut out too many trees when building the lodge, and the whole area was cool and green. After a quick afternoon nap (not really deserved, but much enjoyed!), we changed into our costumes, and set off for a swim in the pools. Almost all the kids had left, so we pretty much had the whole place to ourselves, apart from a couple of siblings who came and ambushed us by dive-bombing off the rocks. It was great to cool down in the clear water, and as we were just getting ready to leave, the local mahouts brought their elephants down for their daily bath. Tatlo lodge has two old cows, who are probably forty or fifty years old. They were both in the process of being handed down, father to son, to two young mahouts who were carrying on the family tradition. The youngest boy must have been all of about nine or ten years old. They herded the elephants into the pools, and started to scrub them down while standing on their backs and heads. The nine year old then got engaged in a water fight with his own elephant ... something he was always going to lose, not having a trunk. He dodged from one side of its head to the other, but he eventually got blasted with a good ten litre squirt of water. You could actually see the elephant chuckling to herself - it's a really close bond that they form - not really like other relationships with people and animals, but more of a friendship. As the elephants waded semi-gracefully out of the water, I was struck by how tiny the little boys looked, riding their shoulders. It always appears that the mahout's in charge, but I'm not really sure who's humouring who when it comes to that kind of a relationship.

We chatted to a couple from Holland, who'd also come down to watch the elephants bathe, and then we headed off to the Saise Guest House for dinner. This is another place at the bottom of the main falls, with spectacular views up through towering mahogony trees to the cascades. We ate, watching the sun going down, and the squirrells playing in the trees - the sacreligeous little rodents were raiding the food offerings from the little altars set up in the forrested gardens, but the gods didn't seem to mind - they looked pretty healthy. After some great food, we headed up to the lodge, and went to sleep, with the sound of the water lulling us to sleep in the background.