As there are no direct flights from Phonsavanh to Luang Prabang and flying via Vientiane would involve stopping overnight we are travelling by road today. We alerted the staff at "Faulty Towers" that we would like breakfast at 7:00 and that we would appreciate fresh bread rolls (as they tried to fob us off the morning before by serving us stale cake-like Asian sliced bread until we spied another staff member ride up with fresh rolls which we then insisted on). We did get bread rolls with breakfast, but imagine our surprise when they also presented us with some more rolls on departure. Somehow the breakfast request got a bit muddled. Our long experience of such travel made us a little apprehensive but, in fact, we had an excellent driver and vehicle and the other road users seemed similarly good. With stops, the trip took 7.5 hours. Once off the Plain of Jars the terrain became mountainous and spectacular and we had a great deal of sympathy/admiration for several couples we saw bike touring. To all of you that think we may be nutters for riding bicycles about the world all I can say is "there are nutters and there are NUTTERS", and no, we are no longer contemplating any bicycle touring in Asia (or Australia, or the Americas, or Africa) only Europe. . We arrived in Luang Prabang mid afternoon and I am happy to say our accommodation (also French run) is back up to scratch, being a one-time "royal" palace of a prince (Lao style that is). On the way to dinner we strolled our way through the night market. Even though this is supposed to be the high season there seemed to be a disproportionate number of stalls so who knows how they make a living. Cheryl bought a small water bottle bag and was the first customer of the day so our purchase money got brushed over all the goods on sale to bring good luck. An excellent dinner at The Blue Lagoon ?? A German run restaurant. Mein Herr was very much in attendance and everything was excellent. Nice to have some good porky products and lots of potato.