Personally I was very skeptical about the phenomena and simply put it down to folk law but I was intrigued enough to interview various people about what their experiences. I found that the event has been recorded by locals in the area for hundreds of years and I must admit that after interviewing dozens of locals and even some well respected foreigners who all claimed to have seen the phenomena first hand, I’m now a little more receptable to the concept. I’ll be back next year to check them out for myself.

Not far from Nakhon Phanom the Mekong cuts eastward into Laos leaving Thailand behind and we made our way to the southern Lao capital of Pakse. It was here that we met a couple of interesting Belgians from UXO (Unexploded Ordinance) Lao. They were technical advisors to Lao staff who had the rather dubious job of picking up and disposing of the millions of unexploded bombs left over from US saturation bombing of Laos during the late 60’s and early 70’s.

Most people will be surprised to know that the most bombed country in the history of war fare is none other than Laos in South East Asia and what is worse is that of the millions of tons dropped, about 30% did not go off!!. As seems to be the case today, during the 60’s and early 70’s the US administration in Washington decided that if they killed lots of people in the third world that these people would change their view on the world and take to the American way of life. So without telling their own citizens the US government commenced saturation bombing of Laos that directly cost the lives of tens of thousands of Lao civilians. Of course all that killing of civilians had the affect of turning everyone against the foreign superpower and a s the communists were the only people fighting back, most of the Lao population abruptly joined the communist party even though many had no real communist ambitions. Hmm!! It all sounds a bit familiar doesn’t it! One would hope the bureaucrats in Washington would have tried to learn something from this little episode in history. Recent events suggest not.

To all the UXO teams in Laos keep up the great work and we certainly hope that after another 150 – 200 years (conservative estimate) you can successfully clean up the mess that has been left in Laos by miss guided US foreign policy.

Finally we made it down to one of the most amazing parts of the Mekong called “the four thousand islands”. At this point the Mekong braids out into various channels that make up a unique seasonal wetland habitat that can only be found in a select few places on earth such as the Amazon basin. Just before the river crosses into Cambodia at a breadth of 12 kilometers it tumbles off a fault line some 10 meters deep. The “Khone falls” are not as high as Niagara or Victoria falls in Africa but they do have more water tumbling off them making them an impressive sight at any time of year.

A favorite breeding ground for fish and hang out for the extremely rare Mekong Irrawaddy Dolphin, the falls are also home to some of the bravest fishermen on earth. We hung out with these fascinating men who risk their lives on a daily basis in and around the violent rapids to catch the sizable fish in the area.

The falls presented the last major navigational barrier for the Mekong First Descent Project. On previous paddle trips to the falls I had located and navigated various challenging class 5 runs down the fault line but with a tight schedule to keep and with people waiting for us just downstream in Cambodia I was forced to semi portage the locally famous “Liphi falls” (A central channel of the Khone Falls) after scouting two unviable channels and simply running out of time. This was particularly frustrating as I knew that if we only had a half a day or so available to scout alternative routes then I would definitely be able to run the drop as part of the Mekong descent but I guess it was not meant to be on this trip and at least it w as a section that I had previously run.