The journey to Luang Prabang involved more windy roads and stunning scenery. The Night Market in Luang Prabang is the nicest I've been to - it is clean and spacious, people didn't hassle me to buy or ask silly prices and, more importantly, it doesn't just sell the same old crap that can be found in every other town - it is full of beautiful and different local handicrafts. I was tempted to buy a ton of stuff but I couldn't justify carrying it around or shipping it home.

We had a quick tour of the city - we went to a temple and then visited a silversmiths and watched the craftsmen making decorative silver bowls used for offering alms to Buddhist monks. We stopped to try some of the 'snake rice wine' which came from a jar filled with dead snakes and scorpions and claimed to be "good for strength", it had a strange plant taste but wasn't actually all that bad!

Finally we wandered through the Morning Market, which had all sorts of weird and wonderful produce for sale - a sauce made from dried buffalo hide mixed with chillies, the whole skin of pigs heads, pigs tongues and pigs jaws (all crawling with flies), huge catfish, dried riverweed and banana flowers, to name but a few.

We took a jumbo (a pick-up truck with benches in the back, like a bigger version of a tuk tuk) for a trip through the countryside to Tat Kuang Si waterfall. The fall was impressive, very tall and I climbed up through the forest to the top of it - the top was strangely calm and quiet compared to the crashing and splashing below - I got soaked from the spray but it was well worth it. There were enclosures with bears and a tiger in the park around the waterfall but I ran out of time to see them as I had to get back to town for my spa appointment!

When all the bars in town close at 11:30pm, one place stays open - the bowling alley - and everyone flocks there. One night I went with the whole group and the next night I met up with Tom from my China tour who happened to be in town so I went with him and a bunch of people he'd been travelling with.

I did a fabulous day trip from Luang Prabang - I spent the morning riding an elephant through the forest. I've never been on an elephant before so it was a bit nerve-wracking, especially when I moved from the security of the bench on its back to sit on its neck with nothing to hold on to! I just leaned on it's hairy little forehead and tried to maintain my balance. There were seven Asian elephants at this camp, six of which did treks for tourists and the other was 61 years old and retired; they were all rescued from logging activities and seemed to be well cared for there. I was a bit frightened of them because they are so big but they all seemed quite tame. Mine was called San and I fed him some bananas when we got back to the camp.

After lunch we took a boat ride down the Nam Khan river to the Tad Sae waterfalls where we could swim and climb up on the rocks. It felt like a very cold jacuzzi and it took me about ten minutes to get used to the cold water but when I did it was amazing - one of the most fun things I've done on my travels. It was only at the end of our time there that we realised it was possible to climb up on the rocks and jump off into the water below when a little kid went running round doing it fearlessly. I was a bit scared, not knowing where the rocks ended and getting dragged along by the water the longer I hesitated on the edge, but when I eventually jumped it was a lot of fun.

Back in the city in the evening, we climbed up to the Wat Phou Si temple on top of a hill in the middle of town, from where there's a beautiful view over the city to the surrounding mountains.