The E-Tu Waterfall Resort is located 800 meters north of Highway 23, at kilometer marker 35 east of Pakse.
The resort is spread over a decent sized piece of land. Much of the land is a working coffee farm. The rest holds several bungalows, a restaurant structure with open-air seating, an office/reception building, and another building currently under construction that looks to be a new reception desk.
The site is right next to a good-sized waterfall, which we could easily hear from our bungalow. There is a step set of concrete steps that lead down to the small river and a foot bridge across it, from which you can fully view the waterfall. In the dry season, when the river is lower, it looks like swimming can be had here.
Our bungalow was a pretty nice place. It had a main room of decent size, with a small refrigerator. The furnishings were good, the bed comfortable, and floors wood. The bathroom was almost a water closet, in that the shower was in the same open space, but there was a curtain and the shower floor was lower than the rest of the bathroom. The toilet was a self-flushing, Western-style thing. There was a large porch off the back, toward the falls. There was no air conditioning, but it’s cool enough on the Bolaven Plateau that you’d need a heater before you’d need an air conditioner.
The room was well-made, adequately maintained, clean, quiet, and bug-free.
The on-site restaurant is the only gig around, unless you want to walk the four kilometers to get to the nearest alternative, or have your own wheels. It’s OK, but not great. With us, the restaurant never quite grasped the vegetarian thing, and the staff lacked either the knowledge or willingness to adapt existing menu items to our requirements. Breakfast was included with the room.
The only wi-fi access is in the office/reception building.
The grounds of the hotel were going to seed when we were there – high grass, weeds in the walkways. But this was the rainy season, an I’ll chock it up to the weather and the low season for tourism.
Laundry was very expensive at $10 US for about 1-1/2 kilograms of clothing. That’s about four times the cost we’ve experienced elsewhere in Laos.
The staff is really a large family that lives on the grounds, as is common in Thailand and Laos. So. The office/reception building is as much a nursery for the youngest child as it is a place of business; and you might have to pry the girls away from the soap opera on the TV to get service in the restaurant. Again, this is par for the course. Fortunately, this family is pretty nice, with the mother even giving us a ride to Pakse when we left.
All things considered, this is probably the place to stay in the Bolaven Plateau waterfall area between Pakse and Paksong. It certainly beats the shit out of the Tad Fane Resort, which we immediately left after looking at their musty, dreary rooms.
