On our second day in Laos the whole group of us nine students decided to trek to the waterfall and possibly on a cave tour as a group. We decided to meet for breakfast and head out as soon as possible afterwards. That was as far as our planning got. We had no idea where the waterfall was or if we could walk or if we had to take a taxi. We didn't even really know how to get a boat/cave tour. Oh yeah, and we're in Laos so we don't speak the language at all. Fun.
We set out, swimsuits on under our clothes, and walk the 15 minutes from our hotel to the main "downtown" of Luang Prabang. We're starting to squabble about whether to just ask a taxi or try to get a tour company to help us when one of the taxi drivers stops to talk to us.
Now, the taxis in Laos are a bit different than those in Chiang Mai. In Chiang Mai you have a handful of regular taxis, but mostly people get around using song-taows - covered pickup trucks with benches in the back (also called rot-dang or "red machine", because song-taows are almost exclusively red) - or tuk-tuks (covered three-wheeled motorbikes with a bench on the back). In Luang Prabang the most common sight was the love child of song-taows and tuk-tuks, which we christened the song-tuk. This name makes no sense if you look at the Thai etymology, but it's definitely fun to say.
So, back to the song-tuk driver. We try to explain to him in a mix of broken Thai and English that we need to get 9 people to the waterfall, and we want to know how much and how long this will take us. It took about 15 minutes for us to get the whole deal worked out, but eventually everyone is satisfied that the driver is going to take us to the waterfall and bring us back, and he'll do it for a reasonable price. Sweet. Then we take a closer look at the back of the song-tuk and worry a little about it both fitting us all and getting 9 Americans (who are fairly larger than Lao and Thai people) all the way to the top of the mountain. Hmm... but no time for nay-sayers! We're going to the waterfall. :) This is why I love traveling with this group.
It takes us over an hour to get up to the park where the waterfall is located, and our song-tuk gets a flat tire when we're about 15 minutes from the park. But the drive up is gorgeous. Laos is very green and has these beautiful mountains that while not as young and rugged as the Rockies are also not yet as old and rounded as the Appalachians. They're teenaged mountains and are a fabulous mix of points and outcrops, but still completely green. Gorgeous. And some farms have a rice crop in the field right now, which is not the case in Chiang Mai, so we all spent the ride up taking a ton of pictures. I kept trying to take pictures of the villages and towns we drove through to the point that people started telling me to stop. But I couldn't. I'll post some of the best when I have some time.
Once we get to the park, we find out we still need to purchase tickets for the waterfall itself, and the ticket people are very cranky because we only have baht rather than kip (last time I listen when Drexler says we don't need to change money). We're also pretty sure that they over charged us. But it was still worth every penny.
The waterfall we visited has about a bajillion levels as the water makes it's way down the mountain to the rice paddies and eventually the Mekong. I started by walking up to the base of the main falls. You aren't allowed to swim in this part of the falls anymore - although they have lots of postcards with people swimming, so I think you could in the past. Once we were done climbing around on the rocks and taking pictures, most of our group wandered back down the hiking trail a ways, until we reached a quiet pool where we decided to swim. Our pool was not posted as a swimming or no swimming area, and we took the lack of signage to mean that it was allowed, just not publicized. We quickly found out why it wasn't publicized, too. There were lot and lots of rocks at unpredictable intervals. The were mostly rounded but you could still scrape shins and elbows on them if you weren't careful. Also, the decaying leaves and sand made a very squishy and sticky bottom of the pool, and as we found out - if you stood in one place for too long the bottom would coat your feet with the sticky slime. Fun! Despite this, swimming was still a blast. And very refreshing (read - freezing cold).
That night we went to see a performance of traditional Lao dance. They performed a portion of the Ramayana - think Beowulf, or Illiad/Odessy, or King Arthur and then make it Asian and Buddhist, and then you kind of have a cultural understanding of the Ramayana. It tells the story of two lovers who go through a bunch of rebirths and perils in order to be together. He goes to war and she gets kidnapped but remains chaste. The part of the story we saw involved the Princess being tempted by two separate men - one of whom wanted to kill her handmaids too - and not only did she refuse them and remain chaste, she also saved her handmaids. Pretty badass for a pouty princess.
After the dance, we went out to dinner and had delicious pizza. Drex also wanted us to try Mekong Whiskey. I still like girlier drinks better. Drex and I also had the "what are you going to do with your life" talk. His daughter just graduated with a masters in journalism and he seems to think that would be great for me to do. I still think I'm gonna end up teaching girls in Pakistan or working with some group in Africa. I don't really have active plans for either, I just feel like it's an eventuality at this point. I also told Drex that I'm still thinking about grad/law school at some point. His response was something about how all of that could still lead to journalism. Apparently he really thinks I should grow up to be Samantha Power.
After dinner we spent some time at the market, looking around mostly, and then headed back to the hotel. As this is going on I'm hearing the first stories about a ghostly visit that two of our party supposedly had at the hotel the night before.
It was pretty freaky stuff. Vera couldn't sleep on one side of her bed, because the ghost would push her until she moved. She and Michelle both saw someone that was not either of them in the room that night. Then my roommate tells me she wants to sleep in the haunted room with Becca, leaving me alone for the night.
So we're all in a bit of a creepy mood when we get back to the hotel, at which point Becca finds her key missing. Did the ghost steal it? Vera and Michelle were going to stay with Becca, rather than in the haunted room - was this the ghost's way of trying to dissuade them from leaving? This is what everyone was thinking, but, priorities, we get the hotel to unlock Becca's room and check to see all of her things are still there... Everything's there, but it's been moved... Definitely the ghost.
Or as it turned out two creepy men, who turned the key in the next morning. Becca had moved out of her room and into mine and Catherine's the evening before, once we were certain the desk clerk hadn't just misplaced the key. Ghost or no ghost, no one was okay with her sleeping in that room when someone, or something, else had the key.
The next morning we left and flew back to Chiang Mai. Nothing too exciting happened. We had the same flight attendant as we did on the flight to Laos. That was kinda crazy.
And that was my adventure in Laos.
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