Plunging Pools, Rocky Rides, and the Capitol!

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Instead of wasting daylight hours and money on a hostel, we decided to spend one more full day in Luang Prabang and take an overnight bus to Vientiane. It ended up being a good choice. We met Elvina, Guillaume, and Matt for a leisurely breakfast. Afterwards we decided to all go up and check out the Kuang Si waterfall that all the tuktuk drivers had been badgering us about. Matt had rented a motorbike, so he went on ahead while the four of us bartered with a driver. We got the price down, but then got stuck waiting nearly an hour while he tried to get more passengers. We threatened to leave, but he kept promising just "5 more minutes." Finally, we helped him convince another French couple to hop on, and away we went.

It was a 45 minute drive to the waterfall, and it was obviously a hopping tourist spot. We found Matt, who had waited for us, then headed along the path. The first area of note was a bear rescue compound, filled with Malaysian sun bears and Asiatic black bears (called moon bears, it seemed). We also ran into our four German boys. Small place, Laos.

The waterfall was actually just as gorgeous as promised. Tier upon tier of luminescent blue water flowed down the mountain, creating serene pools along the way. A rope swing hung over one such pool, and Matt and Caz took full advantage of it. After passing the smaller falls, we came upon the main event: water plunging down a towering cliff. Despite our soreness from the kayaking and trekking, we couldn't resist climbing to the top. It was steep and slippery, and we took a few wrong turns through the squishy mud, but we ended up wading through the rock basins just at the lip of the giant falls. It was pretty fantastic.

We headed back down to grab our tuktuk and a few bags of fried bananas. We bid goodbye to Matt, then to Elvina and Guillaume when we arrived back in town. Then we did some interneting and last minute market shopping before heading to the bus station.

We've been on a lot of buses this trip. They've been crowded, and they've been bumpy, but this bus in Laos definitely took the cake. It was too dark to see just how awful the roads looked, but we could feel every bump in the 12 hour ride to the Laotian capital. We were pretty happy to stumble off at 7:30am, butts sore, legs bruised, and eyes bloodshot. The station we were let off was about 8 km outside of central Vientiane, and we had a hard time bargaining with the tuktuk drivers. They just refused to budge, and we eventually had to give in and pay up. Once in the city, we quickly found a travel agency, booked a ride to the airport that evening, and stored our bags for the day.

We went for a bit of sightseeing, hitting up the oldest temple in Vientiane, Wat Sisaket; Patuxai or Victory Monument, a replica of the Arc de Triomphe; and a statue of a guy whose name we weren't quite sure about. It was hardly even midday at this point, and we were feeling quite zombie-like, so we found a bit of shade in a park on the Mekong and had an afternoon snooze. Feeling much better after that, we found a restaurant with wifi and had our last Laotian meal. At 5 we caught our ride to the airport to fly to Hanoi.

By the way, in case anyone is wondering, flying to Hanoi was the best decision we have made this entire trip. Always fly between Laos and Vietnam. Trust us.