We had learnt that there was an orphanage run by COPE which had a visitor centre similar to the one in Vientiane, which we had failed to visit. The minibus driver we had hired with another couple found the orphanage with no difficulty but no visitor centre. After several false trails were followed we eventually ended up at the visitor centre of
UXO LAO, one of the NGOs involved in clearance. A sobering display of the extent of the problem included an opened cluster bomb containing 680 inert bomblets. Apparently some had up to 3000 bomblets. An etimated 30% of all ordinance failed to explode.
Following this the waterfalls are places to chill out.
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| Tad Sae |
Tad Sae is accessible by boat along the Nam Khan - we went as part of our Elephant Village tour. As well as the swimming area it has a multi-stage zip-wire where customers descent on a series of wires, finally crossing the bathing pool. It is also the site of another of the elephant parks.
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| Tad Kuang Si |
Tad Kuang Si is about 25 km from LP by road and much more commercialised with a large area of stalls and restaurants clustered around the entrance. The main cascade is around 100m and very impressive. The river then enters a series of pools, suitable for swimming, which Susan braved. As at Tad Sae the water is a pale turquoise colour, very similar to glacial melt water, presumably because of very fine sediment.
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| Moon bear at the rescue centre |
Within the centre is a well maintained
bear rescue centre. It has 23 bears, mostly asiatic black bears (moon bears) which have been rescued from the illegal trade in bear bile (used in Chinese medicine) or donated by people who have misguidedly bought cubs as pets. Unfortunately because of the nature of their capture few of these can be returned to the wild.
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