After about 18 hours of travelling by bus we eventually hit the Laos/Cambodia border. By this time we'd actually had our minds changed on our destination by some travellers we had met on the journey, and had now decided to head further north to a place called Luang Prabang. We had to wait for about 3 hours at the border crossing for the authorities to acknowledge that we was actually there. Luckily we'd hooked up with four people on the bus doing the same trip so we wasn't alone which would have been pretty daunting to do by yourself. Also travelling the same way was a Thai woman who could speak english and communicate with the border crossing officials so she was practically telling us step by step what to do and where to go and she was very helpful towards us.
As we got deeper into laos i could tell it was going to be very different to Vietnam, there wasn't nearly as many villages and there is a lot more untouched land, forests and jungle draped over huge mountains, really stunning bit of scenery. We arrived in Luang Prabang at around 10.30pm with no guesthouse booked up, but there was a few of us so just went for a walk around the town and eventually found one which cost only 60,000 kip (£4.60) per night.
The next morning of the 2nd, we woke up nice and early, 9am, to catch a taxi to the Kuang-si waterfall, there was 10 people so only cost 30,000kip each and it took around 30 minutes to drive there. Straight away you could tell that this one of the main tourist attractions with the amount of tourist there, but once there you could understand why. A number of smaller waterfalls at the bottom with a turquoise shade, and then further up, the main waterfall which was easily 100m high but not too powerful so could get up very close. There was also a path we was able to hike up and look over the top with an amazing view of all the waterfalls below. By the time we had trekked back down we were all ready to cool off and take a dip. One of the waterfalls below had a pool with a rope swing and a small waterfall which we able to jump off and was the main attraction for everyone to have a swim. Before the waterfalls was a rescued bear enclosure, which homed many sun bears rescued from poachers, so was nice to see them roaming around. On the way back to our taxi I grabbed some lunch, a whole chicken leg cooked from a BBQ on a bamboo stick 15,000kip of pure heaven and instantly surround by local dogs, so gave them the bones. Back in town, as the rain started to come down, we took shelter in the closest bar and spent the afternoon drinking "Beer Lao", which is the local brew, only 8000kip (60p) and comes in a huge bottle (660ml) and slips down far too easy. Having witnessed the town shutting down at a very early 10.30pm the night we arrived, we decided after a very merry afternoon we that we should go in search of the famous Luang Prabang "bowling alley", where apparently the locals and everybody else who wants to carry on the night, goes for a late night drink, so we wasn't sure what to expect. But to our surprise when we got there, it was actually a ten pin bowling alley which seemed very very surreal, with every lane packed with locals and tourist, very much enjoying the late night drinks and bowls. After a couple of games and again some very cheap whiskey we duly left, having left quite a mark on the place. Knowing that we already had a bus booked for Vang Veing in the morning and knowing it was going to be a massive struggle to get up in the morning.