Louisa, Beth, Josh, Guto, Andi and myself had some breakfast than hired a tuk tuk to take us to the Pak Ou Caves that we had passed when we were on the slowboat. The ride was ridiculously bumpy after we left the paved road, and we stopped at a small village where the driver lead us to the water, and we had to cross over the Mekong by boat. The boat driver couldn’t have been more than 8, but he seemed to know what he was doing.
The cave was a graveyard for Buddhist images, but overall not too exciting. Not worth the extra money we had to pay for the boat, and entrance fees. After a short while there, we headed back to Luang Prabang, drove through the town and stopped at Kuang Si waterfall.
There’s a bear rescue setup there, so we looked at some rescued bears, thinking they didn’t look that secure. There’s also a tiger, but he was “Not out today”, so we didn’t get to see him.
We came across a really nice area and thought we’d jump in for a swim. We swam for about 20 minutes, then headed up to see the rest of the waterfall, and realized we’d swum in the worst of the many pools created by the waterfall. The waterfall itself was really nice. If you were making a fake waterfall, you’d probably use Kuang Si as your inspiration.
We climbed to the top and swam in the pool created at the very top. It was deep enough that we could jump off the ledge and in, so we did that. It was pretty quiet up there too, which was nice.
Headed back to Luang Prabang afterwards, and showered, then grabbed some dinner. Ran into one of Andi’s friends, Joe on the way to the bar, so we played some pool with him. Turns out he and Josh are from the same town and have some mutual friends. Small world.
Bars close at 11 in Laos, but we found one that was opened later, so we hung their for a bit. Unfortunately, the guesthouse closed at midnight, so we had to make our way over there. We were almost locked out, but there was someone asleep in the front lobby who let us in.