The Bolaven Plateau's elevation and volcanic soils were recognised by French colonial planters in the late 19th century as near-ideal for arabica cultivation. Coffee came to the plateau during the colonial period and never left. Today, the farms around Paksong produce a significant share of Laos's coffee export — arabica beans grown in the cooler highland conditions that the lowlands cannot offer. Walking the side roads off the main highway, you pass through groves of coffee trees in various states of season: white-flowering in the dry months, heavy with red and yellow cherries at harvest. The farmers are accustomed to going about their work with the occasional curious visitor wandering past. They are, as travellers note, friendly — if mildly surprised to see anyone venture off the tarmac.

Paksong itself is small enough to walk end-to-end without planning. The main road from Pakse is also the main road through town; the street grid, such as it is, fans off from that highway in short branches of dust and low buildings. At the market in the morning, vendors sell fresh-baked baguettes — a French colonial inheritance that persisted long after the colonisers left — alongside blended fruit drinks and noodle soups. A few restaurants line the main road with menus in English and Thai, priced at the local scale rather than the tourist one. The coffee, however, is the point. Won/Koffie's Coffee and JHAI Coffee House, both on the main road past the hospital, offer direct engagement with the product the plateau produces. The JHAI Coffee Farmers Association, which connects smallholder farmers with fair-trade markets, has its roots in this region. A cup of Paksong arabica here costs a fraction of what the same beans fetch in Vientiane or abroad.

From March through May, when the Mekong valley below bakes in pre-monsoon heat and Pakse temperatures routinely exceed 38 degrees Celsius, Paksong offers an alternative that Lao families with the means to travel take advantage of. The plateau acts as a natural air conditioner: elevation, cloud cover, and prevailing winds keep temperatures moderate throughout the year. It is the kind of cool that does not require explanation — you simply feel it. Waterfalls cascade off the plateau's edges into the valleys below; the most dramatic, Tad Fan (also spelled Tad Fane), drops more than 120 metres in twin falls visible from a viewpoint a short distance from town. The plateau's combination of dramatic scenery, agricultural landscape, and manageable temperatures makes it a quiet counterpoint to the busier traveller circuits further along the Mekong.

The Bolaven Plateau and Paksong sit near the epicentre of one of Laos's worst modern disasters. In July 2018, Saddle Dam D of the Xe-Pian Xe-Namnoy hydroelectric project — a large dam complex constructed partly on the plateau's southern slopes — collapsed during heavy monsoon rains, sending floodwaters through villages in Attapeu Province below. Paksong itself was the nearest significant town to the dam construction site. The disaster reshaped the landscape downstream and displaced thousands of families from their villages. It cast a long shadow over the Bolaven Plateau's image as a peaceful highland destination, and over Laos's broader ambitions to become a regional electricity exporter. The plateau's farms and the dam project had coexisted uneasily for years; after July 2018, that coexistence was redefined by loss.