More adventures in the Oasis

My Buddha! Can this town be for real? Not only is it a pleasant and relaxing oasis away from the stresses and aggravations of SE Asian life, but it's also teaming with mounds of these mouth-watering taste sensations that have been absent from my life for so long - baguettes. On every corner one will find a street-side vendor with their mountain of baguettes. It's no luxury good here, my friends - it's a way of life. And for those of you who might think that nothing good has come out of France, I beg to differ and will publicly declare my love for the French for bringing baguettes to Laos. My restaurant of choice this morning was the Scandinavian Bakery where I had a great breakfast sandwich on a freshly baked bagel. It was heaven. Yuuka joined us there and after talking with Eric, we headed up to the temple on the mountain to enjoy the views and the sights while we waited for Eric to arrive. We climbed up Phousi hill, the mountain/hill in the center of the city, saw the views of the city from the top and climbed down. While on the mountain, I looked out at the path that our plane must have taken two nights before. You could visualize exactly what happened. It was a bit surreal to be looking up at what I was looking down on, only when I was looking down I was a bit more nervous. The views from the top were spectacular. We wound our way back down and ended up running into more folks from our flight. This happened over and over again - we had friends all over town. I felt like I was a part of Cheers - everyone seemed to know my name. One the mountain, we encountered our first war relics in the form of flower pots made from the back of a rocket.

After conquering Phusi Hill, we went to meet Eric. Eric was going to take us out to the waterfall outside of town. We met him in front of our guest house and took off. It was Eric and Peter in front, with Yuuka, Piachang and I in the back. The conversation again broke down like it had the night before and a mixture of Swedish, English and Thai ensued. We got to the waterfall and walked up to the animal sanctuary that was located near the waterfall. They’ve got quite a few rescued Asian bears and a tiger on the property. Eric had been several times before, but hadn’t seen the tiger. We split up to walk around the pen. Peter saw him first and gave a shout. We came running down only to see his tail disappearing into the jungle. Then a bunch of water buffalo in our direction started making noises and he came running back! He was a very impressive looking creature. We then wandered over to the waterfall. There are several different levels and at the lowest level you can jump off a waterfall which is about 4 meters high into a pool down below. There was also a rope swing. After playing around in the water there for a while, we went up to the second level which was smaller and didn’t have as large of a pool at the bottom. You couldn’t jump off, but you could climb under the waterfall and have the water falling on you head and kind of disappear into the waterfall. Finally, the largest of the waterfalls. This one was by far the biggest and was gorgeous. We walked up the waterfall, first emerging about halfway up and eventually came out on top of the waterfall. There was so much water that the trail had become a river and there was water pouring down it. It was muddy and wet and absolutely amazing. At the top, there was a swampy looking area and a flat pool of water along the edge and it just dropped off straight down. Looking out, you saw the water and then the view off in the distance. It was like someone just took to pictures and placed them together – they didn’t seem to fit together. We sat up top of the waterfall for a while taking different pictures and hanging out and then made our way back down towards the car. We then drove into town and had a Laos sandwich made on the baguettes that you find all around town. The sandwich was amazing – yet another variation of the sandwich that I approve of. Eric had to head off at that point so he dropped us off at a Spa where we all got a Mystic Laos massage. We arrived all dirty and sweaty after having been hiking and swimming all morning, a shower before hand was needed and after changing into the nice clean clothes they provided for the massage, I felt like a new man. The massage was wonderful. It was similar to a Thai massage, but had less stretching and bending. They focused more on putting pressure on certain places and working those pressure points. I enjoyed it. It’s hard to say which is better – they both have their strengths. It just depends on your mood and what you’re looking for. After that, we sipped our tea and felt incredibly relaxed. From there, we walked back into town through the night market, doing a little shopping along the way before finding our way towards dinner. Dinner that night was a more traditional Laos dinner. The food tasted okay, but wasn’t great. It seemed to lack a lot of flavor. I’m not sure why. But the meal wasn’t as good as I thought it would have been. We then headed to one of the bakeries in town and had some cake for desert, split up and headed back to our guest houses.