Ok, so mornings are getting harder. I guess my body clock is adjusting to the time zone here. Damn, I was enjoying my energetic beginnings to the day.
7am start this morning, for the usual eggs + fruit + bread breakfast. It was really hot already which was a bad sign – heat + humidity can be really hard work here. We all headed off to the Arts and Ethnology museum, which had tribal stuff, clothes, artefacts – not very much though and we moved through it all very quickly… everyone was very tired, hot and quiet and perhaps not in the mood for history at 8am in the morning.
Then a walk through the markets again, full of lots of food and lots of flies. Again lots of weird things, like live frogs, fish being gutted on the side of the pavement, whole dead chickens….
At about 11am we all took a big tuk tuk thing an hour up to the Kuang Si waterfalls. We didn’t really know what to expect and kept thinking each waterfall we came across was the ‘main’ waterfall and being unimpressed. Turns out the main waterfall actually was pretty impressive – no Niagra falls, but there was a helluva lotta water coming down there. There had actually been a flood around 4 days ago and a lot of the viewing bridges had been completely washed away so we couldn’t climb to the top – not sure we would have anyway though!
And then we went swimming! This was fun! The water was cold but nothing compared to say, the Tablelands in Queensland last year. It was also brown (of course) and we had no idea what was on the bottom – as a result getting in was a rather slow, careful affair. The best bit was all of us trying to swim against the current to get into the middle – funny.
After swimming, Kelly and I felt like we’d just been to the beach and a result ordered hot chips for lunch, tsk tsk (we did order noodles as well but they remained mostly untouched).
Around 2pm we took a taxi back to town – in the pouring rain. Weeeee, this was fun too, and the rain finally cooled the city down.
Kelly and I were really tired at this point and wanted to back to the hotel and nap – instead we opted for going to get an hour long Laos massage. I was a little worried I was going to go to sleep on the table, but I forget that these things aren’t always as gentle as I think they will be. The lady was therapeutically punching my head at one point. That said, it WAS relaxing and I had a bit of a ‘wow, I’m in Laos needing to nothing but sit here and be massaged’ moment.
Back through the markets, back to the hotel and off to dinner at a local family’s house. I didn’t know what to expect by this but it was really lovely. We all sat around on the floor and the family gave us a traditional welcome – we had to touch the plate in the middle of the circle whilst they said a prayer. Then each lady came and tied a piece of string around both our wrists (four on each wrist) for a blessing. Food was really yummy again – spring rolls, fried chicken, pork lap, green curry, fried eggplant…
Back through the markets again afterwards. I can’t really explain how much I love these markets – all the textiles are amazing, so many colours – I want to buy everything even though I’d never use it at home. I have bought a little patterned bag – we will see how much of my money the market takes tomorrow.
Time to go out afterwards – our guides had talked about a retro bar where they played 80s music so we headed there. It was the most bizzare experience – 80s decor in a club at the back of some random, quiet looking hotel (including the obligatory Merry Christmas and Happy New Year signs you find everywhere here). The band just kept playing slow Laos ballads whilst people danced in circle motions around the floor. The most exciting things were the gin and tonics Kelly and I bought that glowed under the black lights.
We abandoned the retro bar pretty quickly… and THEN. This is a funny town as all the bars close at 11pm.There is only one place to go after this… bowling! Everybody goes to a western style bowling alley out in the countryside… getting there in a tuk tuk was a bit nerve wracking as it looked like our driver was taking us deep into the unknown. But we got there and bowled three games until 1am in the morning. Such a weird experience. Our bowling (particularly mine) got steadily worse as we became more tired and more drunk.
Back to the hotel around 2am for sleep.
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