The next day we had learned something from our earlier mistakes, and we had all planned out and in the morning we woke up even earlier. We rented a 125cc motorbike and drove to the waterfalls, which were about 35km away from the city. (By the way, the man in the shop was great, he kept telling us how dangerous it is to drive in Laos, how bad all the other drivers are and kept telling us examples of other travelers who had ended up in big troubles after renting a bike. But finally he let us rent the bike anyway..) The roads were not in a very good shape so it took us a long time to get there, but I still enjoyed the driving a lot. We spent many hours in the waterfalls, which were totally amazing. The color of the water was exactly as you would imagine it to be in paradise. The waterfalls were in many parts, and inbetween there were kind of small pools. In some of the pools you were able to swim also. We also found a more quiet spot after climbing higher, even one place where we could swim under the waterfall to a small cave. Not bad at all.
In the end we didn't have time to go to the caves because we spent so much time in the waterfalls, but we didn't mind at all because we had a really good time. At 6 pm we took a tuk-tuk to the bus station, from where we started the long journey to Vientiane. We had booked tickets in advance to a VIP bus. The bus was ok, much better than the cheaper bus. I found the bus good enough, because after all we are in Laos, so I don't think you should expect very much. Sampo clearly was not quite as satisfied. The trip took 12,5 hours, so it was very rough. Every time the bus hit a bump or slowed down or something else unexpected happened I woke up really scared, because the road was a really small and narrow one in the mountains and I did not trust our driver 100% either. So sleeping was really difficult. We only had one longer break. Luckily we were well-prepared and had bought many baquettes and a packet of nutella.
We arrived in Vientiane around 8 am and headed to the hotel where we knew two Finnish fancypants should be waiting for us. And they were, so now we have spent the day feeling bad about the fact that we have to spend many weeks with each other. The city of Vientiane really did nothing to impress us, so basically we just wandered around the city the whole day without doing anything special. In the evening we decided to eat in a fancypant-restaurant that had a really nice view to the Mekong-river. Tomorrow morning we'll take a bus and continue our trip to central Laos.
Oh by the way, we have finally also made contact to some other Finnish travelers also. In Chiang Mai we heard a couple talking Finnish in our hostel restaurant. In Luang Prabang we were eating in an Indian restaurant and had just had a discussion how we haven't met many Finish people this time, when two Finnish girls passed us by. And today we first saw a Finnish couple in a bus station and later two Finnish guys in a restaurant. I have a feeling we're still going to meet a few during this trip.
(Btw, we have also tasted many strange things already during the trip, for example in this picture Sampo is drinking the famous "Karmes-viina" a.k.a. "Snake-whiskey". Yep, there is an actual snake inside the whiskey bottle. Yammiiii!)
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