After our night bus from the border to Luang Prabang (the old capital) taking 14 hours we finally arrived! Our first impressions of the place is nothing but good and our guest house is very nice and clean with a fan. Our first day was a bit of a write off as we just relaxed as well as eat at a lovely cafe next to us called Cafe Tou. Which in the evening we had their taster menu in which you try 8 different types of food, I had the vegetarian and David had the meat one. It was a taste sensation to say the least, seaweed from the Mekong river and fish as well, a lovely curry too, I actually have never eaten so much in one sitting.

The following day we hired bikes and cycled round the town, we went to the Wat Xieng Thong which was beautiful and there is a mirrored elephant on the back of the temple that took us a while to find as we had seen a photo of it in a guide book. I was not disappointed at all by this temple, even though it is slightly old and in need of some repairing it was breathtaking. We cycled to the Wat Phu Si and walked up the hill, it was in a middle of the day and the heat was quite something, sweat dripped off us as we climbed to the top. The view was simpling amazing, and well worth the climb, it seemed to be out here the steps are very steep, they bring a new meaning to steep steps. We loved our day of cycling around on our city bikes, it was a great way to see more of the place. We ventured out at night to the night market and bought up many goods from there, it was nice as for once in an Asian market they were not really any fake goods for sale. The market was full of handcrafted goods and amazing sights such as snakes in bottles of spirits, and the unfortunately ivory chop sticks as well as turtle shells.

The next day with Janis we went to a waterfall, it took us a tuk tuk ride and a river boat trip to get to the waterfalls. By the waterfalls their was beautiful Asian elephants which you could ride through the waterfalls if you wanted. The waterfalls rippled over limestone rock and where a beautiful mint green colour, we spent the rest of the day swimming and chilling out in the sun in the waterfalls. They best way to spend such a hot day in Laos, it was prefect. We booked flights to Hanoi whilst we were in Luang Prabang as it is cheap and saves us the bus journey totally 30 hours there.