Advertisement
Published: April 20th 2009
Edit Blog Post
I spent my first day in Luang Prabang wandering aimlessly around the streets, just taking in the French(ish) architecture and taking it easy for the most part. I popped into a few of the wats (of which there are a ton) for good measure and marveled at all the orange-robed monks walking around.
That is the "Don't Swimming" area
Is it just me, or does that just make you want to jump in even more? But I digress . . .
After we were reunited in Luang Prabang for one evening, Courtney went off on her overnight trek and so I didn't want to do any of the sights that she might want to do once she came back. On the second day, though, I needed some more action, but I was feeling really wish-washy about what to do. I finally decided was going to check out Kuang Si waterfall, which is about 35 km from Luang Prabang. The next step was getting there. I thought about renting a motorbike but was not so keen to ride one alone and then found out that they are prohibitively expensive to rent in Luang Prabang (not the $6 or so of Thailand). Just at the right moment, I bumped into one of our neighbors at the guesthouse, Dominic, from England, and he said that he was going to ride a bicycle to the waterfall. The title of this blog is a quote from the Lonely Planet: "Exercise junkies can also get to Tat Kuang Si by bicycle." My other guide book described the ride as 'undulating.' Now, I surely don't consider myself to be an
'exercise junkie,' but I do like to kick my butt every once in a while. I took a look at Dominic and assessed him as an average guy- no fitness junkie, but no couch potato either. But I still wasn't ready to commit. So I told him that maybe I'd see him there.
I went to change some money and grab some food and by that time I had decided that I was up for the challenge. I know that 70 km is no sweat for a lot of Boulderites but it is definitely the farthest I've ridden in one day. I reasoned that if the going was too hard, even just for the return trip, it would always be possible to load the bike into a tuk tuk/songthaew to ride back to town. I set off knowing that too much time had elapsed to catch up with Dominic on the road, but hoping to meet up with him once I got there.
The ride was pretty tough for me, but it also felt really good. Because I had waffled about in the morning, I was riding during the hottest time of day. There were times when 'undulating'
seemed like a cruel joke. Tuk-tuks of smug and/or empathetic tourists hauled past me. I recognized their looks- I've given those looks to poor suckers struggling uphill on bicycle in the heat of day. Wait, now I'M that sucker!
It's all such a mind game, too. On the uphill my mind was constantly vacillating between cavalier bravado and negative self-talk, thinking about the glorious waterfall at the end of the trip and wondering if I should bag the whole thing and go back to town to sit at a cafe and eat chocolate croissants. But then as soon as I hit the the top of the hill and start coasting downhill, all the struggle is immediately swept away and forgotten. Smooth sailing, for a little while anyway. The good thing about the time of day was that the schools were letting out for lunchtime and so I got lots of friendly "Hellos," "How are yous?" and "What's your names?" as well as some high-fives (one of which almost made me lose my balance on a bridge). At one point a couple high school boys on a motorbike slowed their speed and rode alongside me for a couple km. They
were really nice, except that the one asked me if I wanted to come to his house 'to play.' He seemed so innocent, though, that I think something was just a litle lost in translation.
The last 2 km were killer uphill and I nearly had to walk at the end, but I finally dragged myself across the (imaginary) finish line and was relieved! I parked my bike and hurried through the entrance to the waterfall. I found Dominic in short order and he seemed surprised to see me. He thought I had come on motorbike because I had apparently gotten there quicker than he thought possible (a little under 2 hours). I later found out why he was so surprised- the poor guy was riding a one-speed bike with a basket on the front up and down all those hills! I cannot fathom doing that ride without gears on that bike, which Dominic referred to as his "Mary Poppins bike."
We headed up to the top of the waterfall, which was a steep hike on my Gumby-like legs. We swam for a little bit in the murky pools at the very top, but I couldn't shake the
feeling that we were in a scene from Anaconda or something and was also fretting about the possibility of leeches, and so we decided to find a better swimming hole. The next level down looked beautiful but seemed inaccessible, but Dominic was utterly determined to get there, so I cautiously followed his lead. We had to do a bit of off-trail to get there and some scaling of the mountain (see photo of Dominic), but in the end we made it to a delightful and seemingly unvisited pool. It felt sooooo good to relax in the cool water after the bike ride and hike. Eventually we were discovered by others from above who made their own path down to our private pool, but by then we were ready to go, anyway.
We decided to split a beer before heading back to town, perhaps not the most brilliant idea, especially when one led to two and it got later than we should have let it. But we were stubbornly determined not to take the offers of the tuk tuk drivers in the parking lot (but figured that some of them might trail us back to town, thus giving us a
way out if we needed one). The ride seemed to go faster with company and there were concrete distance markers every kilometer, so it was easy to track how much we distance we had left. It turned to dusk and still we pushed ahead, still too proud to pay for a ride back to town. Unfortunately, though, the sun set fast, and though I wasn't too physically tired to keep going, eventually it got pitch dark and it seemed foolish to be on the curvy road in which I couldn't see Dominic 10 feet ahead of me. As luck would have it, a pickup truck pulled over and it turned out that it was a young couple who worked at the waterfall and recognized us. They offered to give us a lift (for freed) in the back of their pick-up back to town and we gratefully took them up on it, seated among boxes and boxes of empty beer bottles. With about 8 km left to go, we had to give up and admit defeat, but we reassured ourselves that we would have made it if it hadn't been for the dark.
Advertisement
Tot: 0.141s; Tpl: 0.016s; cc: 12; qc: 58; dbt: 0.0714s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.2mb