Week 10- Laos (Luang Probang) Day 3

Today we had another feast of a breakfast at the guesthouse before heading off for the morning to the Pak Ou Caves. We were picked up by tuk tuk and taken down to the river to catch our slow boat to the caves. When we arrived there was a group of ladies waiting too. The tuk tuk driver, another guy and the ladies were all talking in Lao for about 10 minutes we had no idea what was going on until our tuk driver came up and told us 'boat not here'. So we all jumped in the tuk again and he took us to the main boat pier instead to get the boat. The boat was very thin and very long with 8 small wooden chairs and a cushion on each it looked very old too, good job we can all swim! Anyway the boat ride took about an hour to the caves the scenery along the way was beautiful and green. We stopped off at the whiskey village on the way to the caves and got to sample some Lao whiskey and rice wine. WOW this stuff was pungent and I'm sure it would burn your insides if you have too much. A bottle of whiskey cost about 75p so you could imagine the taste! Some of the whiskey had dead snakes and lizards in, was pretty gross really not sure why anyone would want to drink that.

Once we arrived to the caves there were quite a few steps to reach the 'bottom' cave, this is the caves with hundreds of Buddhas inside. Not the most spectacular cave we have seen! But was interesting to see and read a little about it. We then had to climb more stairs (about 190) steps in total to the 'top' cave which was the bigger cave of the 2. It was very dark inside so we had to use our lights on our phones to see! There wasn't really much inside this one,a few bigger statues of Buddhas (not sure it was worth the steps). We then got onto the boat back into town. It was super hot today so we were all glad to be back on the boat for some natural 'air conditioning'.

We arrived back into town at lunch time, so we had a quick bite to eat at a cafe on the river and went and got homemade ice cream for dessert (best ice cream ever). We thought it was a good idea to go and cool down in the pool for the rest of the afternoon as it was too hot.

After a relaxing afternoon we headed back and got ready to go out for dinner. We had seen a restaurant (Joys) on our first day that was close to the river and the menu looked good and cheap. I looked it up on trip advisor and it had raving reviews so we went there. It was relatively close to our guesthouse too. The restaurant was really small felt like we were sitting in someone's front room, in fact I'm pretty sure we were. There were only about 4 tables and there were about 4 other people eating there when we arrived. We definitely made the right choice the food was delicious, probably the best we have eaten so far. We shared spring rolls to start. I had fried fish in garlic and Oman vegetables (mixed veg with lemongrass), Katy had chicken dish which was like a curry (can't remember the name) with rice and Charlotte had her favourite Massaman curry with rice and we all shared some morning glory. Incredible!

We thought we had better try and walk off some of this food so we decided to have a walk down the market and Charlotte bought a little bag to keep bits and bobs in for about 75p before we called in a night :).