I want to start this post by apologizing for the short blog yesterday. We got rather happy on cocktails and g&ts at the bowling alley and archery. We stayed until 2am! Needing to complete my day I rushed a blog post.

With that aside, we woke in the morning with various severity of hangover. I guzzled a pineapple juice and Robin a black coffee. We hopped in a tuk tuk taxi and got driven towards the falls. On the way we stopped at a road block for 30 mins. A landslide had slipped half the road 100 feet into a river. Thankfully the resourceful Laotians patched it up for us to use.

We parked at the falls and entered the national park. On entry we saw a section dedicated to saving the bears. Different breeds of bear had been rescued from illegal pet trade and given sanctuary in the national park. They were sunbathing and sleeping in the sun unbothered by us taking photos.

Walking further we saw the start of the falls. 3 small cascades with pools for swimming led to the main event. 2 were shut for swimming so we headed for the main falls. We took photos of each other and had photos taken of us by old Asian couples. The Chinese love to have photos with white people. We are kind of like pseudo celebrities to them.

After, we went swimming in the open pool. The stairs going down had small fish circling them. They nibbled at your dead skin as you walked down like a fish spa. The water was cold but not unmanageable. We spend 30 mins swimming, jumping, and sitting in the blue waters of the waterfall.

Lunch was fried chicken rice in a small waterfall side restaurant. We asked for chili, our spice tolerance going up, and got given a chili sauce with fish sauce and soy.

Leaving lunch we decided to skip the elephant camp. In Laos there are less laws surrounding elephant abuse and many camps allow riding which we do not agree with.

Instead we head to the buffalo creamery. We tried buffalo icecream flavored coconut and caramel. It was richer and creamier than normal icecream. Here we found a cat, well a cat found me and climbed into my lap. Bring ginger and white we named it pumpkin. Time came to say goodbye to pumpkin and we head back to the hostel.

Dinner was back in the night market at a bbq place. We had meat, veges, and tofu grilled in spices with a spicy sauce.

Tomorrow we are up early to make the most of our morning before onward travel.

-M