Welcome to the jungle

After our morning of seeing the monks, we headed off at 7:45am to go on the tour we booked for the day through All Lao Travel. First stop was the Mahout Elephant Lodge. These huge, heavy animals have the nicest eyes. We saddled up and at first, they had all three of us on different elephants. Unfortunately some more people joined our tour, so Lisa and I shared while Staci had one to herself. The good part was that this was Staci's third time on the elephants, so she went ahead of us and took pictures. All I can say is that we're well documented on this excursion! We rode across the river and then out through the jungle for an hour. Honestly, the trip was really cool, but I was ready to get off and do something else for a while.

We went from the elephants to our bamboo raft. We meandered down the Nam Khan River while eating lunch. We had fried rice with egg, pork and spicy sauce which was great. Our tour guide, Tuoy (pronounced Two-ee) had studied English for three years in college and was excellent. He was 25 and married just a month. He spent the bulk of the time telling us about the life of a monk. The minimum time a boy must spend as a monk is 6 nights/7 days. You can start as early as 6-7 years old. First, you begin as a seung, then you become a teep and finally a john. A boy's monkhood determines his mother's safe passage to nirvana, the afterlife.

From the raft, we boarded a van to take us to the Kuang Si waterfall. Having seen a ton of waterfalls in several different countries, this is one of the most beautiful set of waterfalls I have ever seen. We had two hours at the falls. They had bears and a tiger for viewing as well. At most every stage of the falls, there was a "pool" for swimming, but the water was pretty chilly. Somehow on the way up, Lisa and I lost Staci. Up to this point, the path was a relatively easy grade; however, that changed quickly as we began a very steep 45-55 degree ascent on the trek up to the top of the falls. Once we were literally at the top, we met the first two people coming down. We were unbelievably disappointed to learn that there was virtually no view from the top. Determined to prove them wrong and find a better view, we decided to cross the water to get to the part where the water drops over the edge to form the falls. Bad idea!

I went first - one foot in on the slick mud bank and down I went. My only concern was not for my safety but rather my brand-new camera that had just gone partially under. The next thing to worry about was my soccer sandals which were fast approaching the overflow. Fortunately the camera was in the case and upon inspection, no water had come into the bag. THANK YOU, Christine, for having such a nice waterproof bag and letting me borrow it!!

So after all that excitement and with soaking wet shorts, t-shirt and sandals, we began the journey down. I think it was 20x scarier going down than up! We were able to stop along the way down and walk out to the falls. Gorgeous! We met back up with the van and headed back to town.

We had an 8pm reservation at Villa Santi, but after a very long, action-packed day and less than 4 hours sleep for me, we decided to go and see if they could seat us early. They happily obliged and we ordered a feast of fried fish in pepper sauce, green papaya salad, Luang Prabang salad, fried noodle with beef, red curry chicken, banana fritters in honey and caramel custard. Staci and I split a carafe of red wine (which turned out to be an Italian red, Elefante, in a BOX!) most like a pinot noir and very good. All in all, we spent a whopping $17 each on dinner.

My eyes were getting glassy by time dinner was coming to a close, so afterward, we walked back to the room. The couple of blocks back to our guesthouse was not without event. Lisa stepped off the curb and in slow motion, nearly face-planted. Once we determined she was okay, we nearly laughed ourselves silly. It was the perfect ending to a great day!