Day 4 - mosquito bite no.1 for Chris!! Woke up to the sound of the elephants, obviously hungry. Breakfast up in the restaurant at the lodge which consisted of a bit of scrambled egg and A LOT of fresh french bread!

After breakfast it was back to the bungalow to prep for a trek to the Tadlo waterfall some 400m upstream. You may think 400m, that is nothing, but...... You have to walk about 3/4 mile downstream to cross the river and then back up again through occasional dense 'bush'. Once there, what a sight, the falls and also fishermen risking life for their daily catch. We were stopped in our tracks from going further upstream by a massive spider that looked like it couldn't eaten either of us so back down the hill it was. We stopped at a little eatery at the bottom of the falls, past Saise Guesthouse to grab some lunch which felt more like someone's house than a restaurant but this was cool. The local children demanded us to take their photo and then for Alice to join then in a photo.

Back to the lodge to chill out as Chris relaxed on the rocks by the river and Alice chilled in the shade. As Stewie from Family Guy would say, Chris was "getting my bronze on baby". Alice had a 'paddle' in the river before we headed to the room to shower and go for dinner.

We had dinner at Saise Guesthouse as apparently this is better than at the lodge, disagree! Chris mistakenly ordered the same as he had for lunch, the traditional Lao dish of Laap (with chillies) and Alice, chicken on the bone! Then came the fun bit, we didn't have enough to pay!!!! We were pointed towards the till where Alice was demanding to run back to the lodge (has anyone ever seen Alice run, didn't think so!!) to get some more Kip. Forget she did of the secret money belt she had purchased 2 weeks earlier and out came the US Dollar! After 5 minutes of calculator action the manger tried to charge us what seemed like $150. A shake of the head later and Chris handed over $20 to get 43,000 Kip back, work it out for yourselves. Dutchie will know!

Back to the lodge with the head torch on to write the blog and again broach the subject of buses from Tadlo to Pakse, no hope! Gonna be strange tomorrow without the constant sound of the river running by.