Another excellent hotel breakfast. This morning I chose Laotian noodles and they delivered. Fresh and limey and just a tiny bit spicy.

We arranged with the hotel to have a private driver for the day, and he picked us up at 9 to drive us out to the waterfall. This is the kind of think we never would have paid for before Millie, but is worth every penny now. And it wasn’t a lot of pennies… only about $34 for the whole day.

He drove us about an hour out into the country side. He spoke decent English and we had an interesting conversation about the large groups of Chinese tourists who visit. He dropped us off at the entrance and in we went.

I’m going to be sad when Millie ages out / outgrows her free entrance. We have noticed that most places in the world do it by height, I guess because age is impossible to prove.

We walked up the hill to the waterfall, which was so pretty that it looked fake.

Millie was already complaining of hunger so we stopped at the little jungle cafe and ordered a mango sticky rice. Mango is my favorite fruit and I think mango sticky rice might be one of my favorite foods. I love it so much.

Once we were full of carbohydrates, we had the energy to take on the trail. We walked straight up the mountain behind the waterfall for about 20 minutes until we got to the top. Millie surprisingly barely complained. I think our training is finally paying off.

At the top were the spring fed pools that feed into the waterfall. It was so, so beautiful. And we were there early enough in the morning that it wasn’t too packed. Millie immediately got in her bathing suit and Nick followed.

I happily took on the role of “watcher of the stuff” and watched them explore and swim. Millie was having the best time. At one point she climbed up a tree and yelled “mom, look!” Every so often I have a moment with her where I think… I wish there was a way to file this memory away so that I’ll never forget a single detail of it; the sound of her voice, the length of her hair, the little bruises on her legs, the way her baby teeth turn inwards, her toenails that always need to be cut. During these times I’m immediately nostalgic for the present. This morning at the waterfall was one of those.

She played in the water until her lips started getting purple. She put her dry clothes back on and snuggled in my lap until she warmed up. Heaven.

We walked on and found a cafe located up in the mountains. We stopped for a smoothie and cold drink. Nick and I talked about how happy we are to be here. The last couple of days have felt like how we expected the whole trip to feel. Amazing food and weather, kind people, everything has been cheap and easy to navigate.

We walked back down the hill and met our driver in the parking lot. He drove us about 15 minutes to the Laos Buffalo Dairy.

We got our ice cream and then began a tour of the farm. It was fascinating and very cute. The dairy was started about 10 years ago by an Australian couple. Local farmers bring them their pregnant water buffalo and the dairy pays them for the milk the animals produce for the following 6 months. They teach the farmers to care for the buffalo and then breed them and return them to the farmers. It is part dairy, part education facility, and part breeder to encourage genetic diversity in the area.

On the tour we got to feed pigs, and see the tiniest baby pigs I’ve ever seen in my life. Cuteness overload.

We got to milk a buffalo! I’ve never milked a cow so the whole thing was new to me. We got to see a newborn buffalo and feed bottles to some slightly older baby buffalos.

Our guide picked up on the fact that Millie liked pink and gave her the pink brush. Then she brought us over to the barn to show us a pink buffalo. I thought it would be some sort of joke, but they really did have one pink buffalo.

Our driver took us back into town and dropped us off at our new hotel. Unfortunately we couldn’t extend our time at the previous one we had booked because they were full.

We dropped our stuff and walked down the main road to the same restaurant we went to on our first night here. We sat outside and ate as the sun went down.

After dinner we walked back, and just like last night, stopped to listen to the monks chanting at each of the temples we passed.