Not much to report so far from Nong Khiaw. Apart from arriving early at the bus station to get here and the bus was setting off at the same time as it was full! Great! We had about 4 hours to kill in a bus station, not much fun!
Nong Khiaw is quite small. We hired bikes yesterday to cycle about 2.5km to a dam, it wasn't that impressive although I think the last dam I saw was Hoover Dam! We also went to a Hmong village which was interesting and cycled up to a big Stupa on the top of a hill. It started to rain quite hard at this point so we came back after a good bit of exercise!
We keep being followed by 2 tribal women who want us to buy some horrible bracelets. When we said no the other day we had just finished eating and one asked us to tip the remains from our plates into a plastic bag for her! We had left a lot to be fair but yesterday before we were eating and had just bought a bottle of water, they were trying to get that off us which I wasn't impressed by!
We are also being stalked by a mid 40's French guy. He was on our boat to Muong Noi and we haven't escaped him since. He's not so bad I guess, just a know it all which can border on offensiveness at times!
Today we head to the jungle(!) for 2 days and 1 night for trekking. I'm a little nervous over the amount of walking, not having hiking boots, where we'll sleep and the inevitable leech attacks but I hope it'll be worth it! We camp by a waterfall so that will be my new shower! We shall see how I survive in a couple of days:)
I have no pictures on my phone of Luang Namtha so this photo is of the beautiful Nong Khiaw on our way to the caves.