We were going to take the mini van back to Luang Probang the next day, but when we got to the bus station, we found out that there was a pickup leaving right then with 2 seats left and it was cheaper, so we decided to go with that.
I wasn't the most comfortable ride and the exhaust turned everything black, but it defiantly could have been worse.
When we got back to Luang Probang, we went back to the same guest house that we'd stayed at before and the old man was thrilled to see us again. He charged into our room to stuff us with fruit.
We heard that the waterfalls around were really nice, so we found a Polish couple who also wanted to go and joined with them to get a better price.
They were heavenly! Absolutely stunning! I've seen quite a bit in these past few years, but nothing quite like these. There were many mini falls all along leading up to a huge one. The water was so blue and crystal clear. I could have spent days on end there, but unfortunately, the others didn't want to stay as long, so we had to leave.
When we got back, the old man greeted us with a handful of sticky rice demanding us to 'eat, eat.' so we ate, ate and he made us promise that we would walk to the temple with him at 5 the next day.
At 5 sharp the next day, we showed up only to find that he'd already left us about 45 min ago. So we waited for him to come back, and as soon as he did, he went and grabbed some fruit and sticky rice handing it to us, telling everyone else at the table that we were his family.
He was devastated when he heard that we were leaving the next day. He told us to come in and sit down. Then he put a bracelet on us both saying that it was for good luck. He didn't speak English very well, so he blessed us first in Lao and then tried to translate it back into English for us. His translations were as follow: "Laura, you stay at my guest house. Very cheap. Thank you very much. Good luck and thank you very much. You stay at my guest house. Very cheap." then he continued to show us photos of his real family telling us that we were now part of his family.
He offered us dinner, but we had already promised our waiter from the day before that we would meet up with him for dinner, so unfortunately we had to decline.
Sai and his friend took us on their motorbikes to a local place to eat. We were the only foreigners in the whole place and felt like everyone was starting at us. I guess they weren't used to seeing red headed and blonde giants who were 3 heads taller than then walking around in that part of town. We were hoping and pretty sure that it wasn't meant to be a double date, rather just a group getting dinner together, although we did see the boys receive several high fives and sly grins as they smugly walked in with us.
We had to get up at 6:30 the next morning since we hadn't bought our ticket yet to Vang Vien.
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