Images from a cruise on the Lower Mekong from Pakse south to Siphandone (Siphandon or Si Phan Don), the Four Thousand Islands, aboard the MV 'Mekong Islands', purpose-built by a Lao-German travel operator.

A shore excursion to Champasak on the left bank allows us to explore the Khmer ruins at Wat Phou, which pre-date those at Angkor.

The vessel can go no further than Siphandone (Siphandon) on the Lao-Cambodian border, where rapids thwarted French administrators and adventurers who tried valiantly to establish a colonial trade route on the river. Locomotives were hauled upriver and then overland to set up the only railway in Laos, running a few kilometres across the islands to bypass the rapids. Today these rusting remains join the surviving pods of the endangered Irrawaddy River dolphin as a tourist attraction. Read more on my blog.

Images captured in RAW format with Nikon D300 and are available for licensing.

More images from Laos and Cambodia.