Kuang Si Waterfalls

Over the weekend in Luang Prabang, we (Nick, his aunt and uncle, and myself) decided to visit Kuang Si waterfall (which is one of the main tourist waterfalls, besides Tad Sae aka the elephant waterfall). Kuang Si is about a 40 minute tuk tuk ride outside of LP, and we "negotiated" a price of 230,000kip (or $30) for the tuk tuk driver to bring us out to the waterfall, wait two hours for us to explore the waterfall and the newly opened Kuang Si Butterfly Park, and drive us back. (The tuk tuk driver's starting price was 250,000kip so we could definitely have gotten him down to an even lower price, but an additional $10 means way more to a tuk tuk driver than to us, and that way we have a better relationship/ experience with the driver anyway.)

The ride out of the city was really beautiful- lots of rice paddies and little villages. 

Arriving at Kuang Si, there's a little village set up around the entrance selling T-shirts, drinks and food, along with a parking lot that is primarily filled with tuk tuks. The entrance fee is 20,000kip ($2.50) per person, and it's totally worth it. 

When you get inside the park, there's a Bear Rescue Center where these tiny Asian bears (so much smaller than North American bears! but still pretty big) are in these large enclosures. There were signs posted everywhere describing the sun bears and the moon bears, and why they need protection in Asia... Traditional Eastern medicine believes there are medicinal properties in bear bile, so these bears are often held captive, or captured on a regular basis, for bile extraction. It's really sad, but it's nice to see the bears that have been rescued playing on their play-scapes or swinging in hammocks.

Past the Bear Rescue Center is the cascading pools from the waterfalls. We got there around 9:30am, so there weren't a lot of people when we arrived, but by 10:30am it was pretty busy.

The waterfalls were beautiful, with small cascading pools that seemed to go on forever. The Kuang Si waterfall is rated a "Top 10 Natural Pool" by Tripadvisor (see the list here).

Nick and his Aunt Jan

Nick and I also got a picture (though it wasn't nearly as cute)

The top waterfall.
You can hike to the top, and it's a wonderful hike (a bit risky in the flip flops I was wearing, but no damage done).
(For anyone choosing to hike to the top: there are hiking trails on either side and you can cross the stream at the top. It's much easier to hike down on the left, as the left side [left when facing the waterfall, that is] has a staircase at the steepest part. The right side is a rough climb to the top when going up, but looked near impossible when going down. There are few safety measures in place and a lot of places that could've been really rough, with small kids or older people. We passed a man in his late 70's, early 80's though, so it might not be too too bad.)

Another thing to note: every once in a while we would stumble upon these areas that smelled awful! It took us a while to figure out why, but now I think it was monkey poop. There were some areas along the trail where it looked as if monkeys had gathered specifically to poop. It was gross.

The view from the top of the waterfall

After the hike (which was pretty strenuous, plus it was hot, so by the end I was all sweaty) I popped in the Kuang Si pools for a bit. The water was really cold, but it felt great. There were a bunch of European long-term backpackers (read: 20-somethings who have been traveling on a budget for a really long time; especially girls with sleeve tattoos and guys with ridiculously long dreads) and Asian tourists that had arrived at the pool by this time, but it was fun watching some of the tricks the guys were doing off the mini waterfalls.