Luang Prabang
I’ve decided that I don’t like roosters. Maybe I should start a campaign for the extermination of all roosters in the world. Or maybe they should all take lessons on how not to crow.
The choir of roosters started at 0330 in the morning…. ARGH!!!!
I was walking up and down the main street trying to organize a couple of trips out to the Pak Ou Caves and the Tat Kuang Si waterfalls.
Every time I walked past the tuk tuk drivers would give me a lower price, they started at USD$12.00 just for the waterfalls. I laughed and kept walking. After all it took me $8 to get here from Vang Vieng. It was amazing how the price came down with no attempt by my part to bargain with them. Every time they saw me they would just take a dollar off the price. It ended up being $8.00, which I still did not accept. I eventually accepted a seat in a mini van for $8 and that included both the falls today and the slow boat for the caves in the morning.
It amazes me that other travellers do not even attempt to try to find out how much they should be paying for things. When I mentioned the, to me outrageous, price of $12 for the tuk tuk to the waterfalls another tourist told me without blinking that was what it cost and you couldn’t get cheaper. They looked somewhat dumbfounded when I told them the price dropped to $8 with out any bargaining or me saying a word to the drivers.
There was an American couple on the mini van for a, thankfully, short period of time. They started oh so dramatically mopping their foreheads, proclaiming how hot it was and demanding that the air conditioning be put on which meant the rest of us had to close the windows. The rest of us thought it was a beautiful day and it was not really that hot.
The American couple waited for all of about 2 seconds before muttering and complaining because there wasn’t an instant blast of cold air headed in their direction.
“Does it work any better than this! I’m not getting any cold air. It’s too hot in here. We paid for air conditioning!”, and so on the diatribe continued.
Thankfully a Swedish guy in front of them lost his temper before I did and turned around told them to shut up, stop complaining and have a little patients as they were in Laos not America.
They waited for all of 2 minutes before their complaints started up again. They were eventually told by someone else on the bus to stop complaining or do us all a favour and get off the bus. They got off the bus, much to our relief, demanding their money back. It was amazing but the mood on the bus lifted considerably, the air conditioning was switched off and the windows opened again.
The falls were quite beautiful with a series of pools that were open to swimming being fed by a waterfall.
The water was a little, um chilly or perhaps you could call it refreshing….. ok so it was cold but it was still nice the worst bit was getting in.
The good part about getting in the water at the lower pools was that at the upper part of the falls you walk up a trail to on side of the falls and you tend to get wet from the spay of water and the pools of water you have to walk through.
By the winces and shocked expressions from those encountering how cold the water was for the first time I think our method was preferable!
