DAYS 5-7 - PAKSE, CHAMPASAK AND WAT PHOU

Goodbye Vientiane and an hour flight south to Pakse

although the nearest town to the UNESCO site which we want to visit - Wat Phou - is a town called Champasak, 25 miles further down.  So, after the excitement of the past two days, some R'n'R, and watching the world go by

 

until I donned a hemlet

for the 6 mile moped ride to Wat Phou, a Khmer ruin built in the 5th and 6th centuries (about 200 years before its more famous cousin across the border, Angkor Wat, which the Khmer constructed when they got back home to Cambodia).

Dignitaries would have sat on the platform overlooking two large tanks, or baray, to preside over official ceremonies or aquatic games and a long processional causeway (lined with phalluses - of course) (probably built by Khmer King Jayavarman VI between 1080 and 1107 and thought to be a trial-run for a similar causeway at Angkor Wat) leads from the platform to sandstone pavilions rising up the hill. 

The pavilions were probably used for segregated worship by pilgrims, one for women, one for men (right).  Only the outer walls now remain 

though you can clamber around inside

and enough is still standing to fire the imagination: detailed carving around the window frames and porticoes: snakes and gods.
 

Beyond the tanks and causeway, steps rise up the hill, lined with frangipani

 

leading to further temples 

and a terrific view down to the tanks