So we are on our way to Luang Prabang. From what we have heard this should be a very chilled out place it is also a World Heritage City. On the way there I was still feeling a bit rough from the tubing/drinking so I did not see much on the bus ride. Christina said there was some nice valleys, mountains and forests. We did go very far up in the mountains and then on the way back down to Luang Prabang the road never straightened out really. It snaked all the way up and down the mountains until we got to our stop.

We got a tuk-tuk to our hostel that we found in the Southeast Asia on a shoestring book. The place was a bit out of the way but cheap enough with our own bathroom, Nice. The people were friendly and after we checked in I had a long snooze. By night time we walked into town, about 2km for some dinner. Again there are quite a few French owned restaurants and they all looked very nice. We found a nice place to have dinner at and I think we both had chicken Cordon bleu. Food was amazing. At night time they close down the main road and it becomes a huge market were you an buy pretty much anything. Its very cool but you have to leave most of you money at home!

We did the normal tourist thing and we visited some Wats. There was also the Royal Palace. It was built in 1904 but shortly after the 1975 revolution The Royal Family were exiled to Northern Laos and imprisoned in the caves of Vieng Xai and then the Palace was converted into a museum. In the kings former reception room painted in 1930 depict scenes from traditional Lao life and each wall is meant to be viewed at a different time of day according to the changing light.
Its very nice inside and again you can not take photo's. That is becoming really annoying. You pay a lot of money to go in then you cant even take a photo. There was also some cars that has been given to the kings from the USA and some European countries. Again no photo's. Just across from The Royal Palace there is a big mount called Phu Si to climb that overlooks Luang Prabang. There is a temple on the top were you can buy small birds in small cages and then you can set them free.

Luang Prabang is also very well known for its monks and Wats. There are meditation classes if you want to learn it as are there throughout asia. Also every morning around 4am the monks walk around town and they are given food or known as Alms by the people of the town. Everybody also has to be lower then the monks to show there respect.

We were in Luang Probang for about 2 days and then decided to go see the Plane of Jars. Little did we know it is another day by mini bus all the way east in Laos. So we booked the outing and decided to get a hotel when we get there. We left Luang Prabang very early the next morning and arrived about 3pm in the afternoon. We paid the minibus driver extra and he took us to the plane of jars as soon as we arrived in Phonsavan. We had this arranged before we left Luang Prabang. We went to Site 1 of the Plane of Jars. Its very strange to see all these huge pots just lying around the country side. Some of the pots are taller then me and I am 6ft and others were really small. The purpose of these 2000 year old jars is a mystery archaeologists believe they could be storage pots for coffee and whisky or for buriel purposes??
We had about an hour and half there before we had to leave. 20 minutes before we left it started raining a lot so we had to take cover in a cave on the site until it let up a bit for us to explore a bit more. There are signs that tell you to stay on the path as there may still be unexploded bombs. We only wanted to see the jars so we stayed one night and left again the next morning back to Luang Prabang.
Between 1964 and 1973 the USA flew 580,344 missions over Laos dropping 2 million tons of bombs which cost $2.2 million a day, 30% failed to explode leaving the country littered with unexploded bombs (UXO) At the current rate of clearing it will take 100 years to clear them all. As you can see from some of the photos the bombs are on display all over the city.
In Phonsavan we walked around and found a nice Chinese restaurant and had some great dinner there. The next morning up early again and we were starving so we went down stairs for breakfast and there was nobody to serve us. Finally someone showed up and the could not speak English. We could not even find the restaurant for breakfast. When we booked in breakfast was supposed to have been included but looks like they pulled a fast one and we got nothing not even a coffee. So very pissed, of we went to wait for the mini bus to take us back to Luang Prabang. Another days journey on the minibus and again a rest stop in a small village that only served dog meat and then back in the van. We did not really eat dog meat, I hope.

At Luang Prabang we booked into the same hostel as we arranged to leave our backpacks there until we came back. We were there another day and then we booked a bus to Chang Mai in Thailand.

The bus journey to Chang Mai was very interesting as we had a very nice bus but the drivers 4 of them kept cranking up there karaoke the whole night long. We knew every word of all there cd's by the morning and we could not get any sleep for a night/sleeper bus. The road we took to get to the border was amazing. We went through loads of little villages high up in the mountains. The road were very scary with some big drop offs and huge pot holes. The buses under carriage scrapped more then once through a pot hole. We got to the border early the next morning. Not sure if you can call it a border if you can just take a boat and go across the river to Thailand but we wanted our passports stamped so we took the official route through passport check and some papers to fill in, on a very small boat with a huge backpack and we are in Thailand. To be honest it was very exciting and very funny. Laos is a great place, very undeveloped for roughing it and the people are very friendly. Check out the photo's.