Laos: falls of the Mekong

Khone Pha Pheng Waterfall, Mekong River. August 2007

We flew to Pakse and arranged a car to take us Khone Pha Pheng Falls, one of the major waterfalls of Asia, not for height but for flow. The Mekong has a huge volume, so even though the waterfall was more reminiscent of Great Falls on the Potomac River outside of Washington, DC, the sheer amount of water was amazing. The most shocking part of the visit was just how low key this major geologic feature was. Everyone knew where it was, but there was almost no development whatsoever. We literally walked down a dirt path to several muddy viewpoints to view it. The water raged by us - it was not a place to slip and fall. Unfortunately, the Mekong was just coming out of flood stage and the water was an unattractive murky brown.

The Khone Falls and Pha Pheng Falls together form a waterfall located in Champasak Province on the Mekong River in southern Laos, near the border with Cambodia. At 10,783 metres (35,376 feet or 6.7 miles) in width from one edge of its multiple channels to the other, it is the widest waterfall in the world.

...

Because the Khone Falls stop the Mekong river from carrying boat traffic to and from China, in the late 19th century French colonialists made repeated attempts to navigate the falls. Their efforts failed, which led to the construction of the Don Det – Don Khon narrow gauge railway on Don Det and Don Khon islands.

(Wikipedia)

What I learned on the visit to the falls was just how much geography can change history. The Mekong is a very long, very deep, very navigable river with one small problem - the Khone Pha Pheng Waterfalls. Basically, these falls prevented the Mekong from ever becoming the transportation artery that would have allowed deep water ships to sail even into parts of China during the Mekong flood season. Additionally, no major city ever developed adjacent to the falls as any kind of transport hub to bridge the gap in river transportation. In essence, the very wide and rocky Falls of the Mekong, although only dropping a short distance, blocked that long and important river and prevented the entire watercourse from becoming something more. What civilization might have emerged there without that waterfall?

For those thinking, "so what"? It is not until St. Paul, Minnesota that the Mississippi proves unnavigable due to a similar kind of waterfall. The Mississippi river system is one of the reasons the US became so economically successful - a free transportation artery to get agricultural and manufactured goods around and out of the country. What might have been along the mighty Mekong if ocean going ships could have made it all the way into Yunnan, China? Myanmar, Thailand, Laos, Cambodia, and Vietnam might have had totally different historical trajectories.

History matters - but so does geography.