Its 9pm, raining properly here in Luang Prabang. Its interesting settling into a sort of mini life here, its such a chilled place, gentle natured softly spoken locals, a lack of “rush”  that you find in other south east Asian places, no tooring horns. But that said, the volume of Chinese people is a little offputting at times, they tend to be loud, block the footpath and like loud Chinese pop music playing. But they have the same right to be here that we do, they just annoy me a little.

Back to todays activities, early breakfast, we walk up through the temple, find a tuk tuk truck, negotiate a 500k kip return trip to Krungsi Waterfalls. Dale and I went there 3 years ago on the Intrepid trip with Naa, truly a magnificent sight. It’s  dusty and the road is crap but we get there. Old mates truck has dust all through the back, a hammock where he sleeps, we think he comes in early with goods for the morning local markets, tries to get a few tuk tuk jobs then heads home in the country. He’s a little weather beaten, smoke hanging out of his mouth, and has a warm smile. He’ll do us.

The crap road is made interesting by the poverty we see on the roadside, little stalls, rickety farm buildings, dusty roof tops and plants, roadworks, children playing, scooter riding locals and tourists.

Vans full of Chinese pass us, we hope it won’t be too busy by the time we get there.

60k kip each to enter, we bypass the slow line of chattering Chinese and ride up with a young Polish man ( Janus I think his name was ?). He put his mountain bike of a plane and is riding it through Thailand and Laos. He’s a serious cyclist.

We walk through the jungle, bypassing some more you know who people, and enter the park

Its also a Sun bear and Moon bear sanctuary  so we check them out.

We ease our way via the lower levels which is very pretty but the main Krungsi Waterfall is truly spectacular. A Swiss couple take some photos for us.

Coffee and icecream at a cafe to rehydrate and energise for the walk back. We talk to an American couple, they are Air BNBing near the buffalo dairy, they seem clueless on a lot of things, not enough time here to explain their ineptitude.

We meet Seamus & Ciara in the queue to get back to the car park, a young Irish couple from Dublin, 9 months on the road. I love talking to young people who have the courage and adventurous spirit to do this sort of thing.

The ride back is dustier, we stop for a pee on the roadside ( not the Navigator), coffee cycles through me quickly.

Shower and rest at home then lunch a Big Tree Cafe. Shopping, a massage to ease the aching back then dinner at a sort of Thai restaurant near us costs 215k kip ($7.40 each and that included drinks)

Sleep in in the morning.

Ciao from Laos

Pauolo