Laos was once a French protectorate. It was warding off the Chinese and the Thai at the time and French protection kept these two huge predators at bay. It also provided Laos with - among many other vitally useful things - a taste for baguettes. Lots of huge changes have taken place since then (independence, a communist revolution, a thorough bombing from US...) but the taste for baguettes has endured. And nowhere more appropriately so than in Luang Prabang.

Yes it has temples, tuk tuks, noodle joints and a night market, but I still think that if I mysteriously woke up one morning in Luang Prabang, having never been there before, I would first hazard a guess to my being in France. It's a gorgeously boutique little town, nestled on a spit of land between the Mekong and Nam Khan rivers, that we liked so much we ended up stayed for an incredibly lengthy five days.

Part of the attraction was that there was so much to do. I can't possibly detail it all here, so I'll stick to the highlights...

The most interesting thing we did was take part in a day-long cooking course - in Laos food this time. This particular course was in a really tranquil out-of-town garden setting and we made five different dishes ranging from soup to sticky-rice and mango pudding. While Thai food is probably still the tastiest we've made so far, we really enjoyed cooking on little clay charcoal stoves and pounding lots of mysterious herbs into tasty sauces. Among other things we learnt how to barbecue chillies, how to eat sticky rice with no cutlery and how to stuff a lemongrass with chicken (not, as you might expect, the other way around).

Probably the most gruelling thing we did in Luang Prabang was wake up at 5:30 am in order to watch monks quietly processing through the streets at sunrise, collecting alms from pious townsfolk. I would love to say that this was a beautiful and touching experience but - while it was definitely unique and worthwhile - I was so tired that I couldn't really see, and it was tipping it down with rain. We managed a handful of photos at what our sleep-deprived brains hoped was a discrete and respectful distance; then we went back to bed with the blurry images of the orange-clad procession safely in our memory banks, and slept for another three hours.

The coolest thing we did was visit a waterfall about forty minutes out of town. These gorgeous falls are made up of a series of re-deposited limestone terraces and the water is a beautiful milky blue colour. We trekked up to the very top of the falls for a gorgeous views out over the hills and then came back down to the bottom to play at jumping in from the rope swing over one of the deepest pools. Good times!

We bumped into and chatted to lots of cool people in Luang Prabang too, the night market is a great place to make new friends over cheap food and we had especially awesome company in a German couple that we first met on the Gibbon Experience. One of the nicest and most entertaining people we met, however, was Robert - a half-Japanese, half-Indonesian man from London, now retired early and living in Kuala Lumpur. I mention him especially because he wins the award for most inappropriate conversation I've ever had in my life. We bumped into him for the second time in two days outside a restaurant and joined him for dinner. After a lively evening of chatting about race, language and facebook, the restaurant started to close and we were gently ushered outside. At the entrance he gathered us to him and told us that the owner of the restaurant is gay (Robert is gay) but that it was sort of a secret that none of the local girls had realised and so they were all still making moves on him. "I mean, do you think it's obvious?" he asked me, clearly thinking that anyone who thought the restaurant owner was straight was totally blind. Now I know, that's fine, you think, just a casual piece of gossip, and so would I have thought if the restaurant owner hadn't been standing RIGHT BEHIND Robert at the time and looking directly at me and Simon. He clearly knew exactly what we were talking about and was mortified. Frozen in an awkwardness-induced horror, one of us managed to blurt out some sort of "ok bye then, see you later" and we both legged it. To be honest I don't think Robert would have cared much if he'd have known, but we were both speechless with embarasement until we got back to our room.

Finally, the most rewarding thing we did was go to the shop for Big Brother Mouse. This is a charity that aims to socially mobilise young people by promoting general literacy and especially understanding of English. They have drop in sessions where young people come to talk English to native speakers in order to improve their skills and ultimately raise their career prospects. We went to two sessions and had a great time, learning absolutely loads about the lives of the students, all of whom were really inspiring people. The amount of effort they go to to educate themselves is really unbelievable and every one of them deserves to reap the rewards of their diligent work.

And there was a massage, a hilltop sunset, a temple, some night market shopping, the world's most disappointing taster menu, a museum, a soaking wet bike ride and lots and lots of coffees.