Xam Neua...we didn't really like it.


We forgot to mention in our last entry (because it's backlog,lol!) that we actually went Elephant riding, and to a waterfall and cave during our time in Luang Prabang.
It was amazing, love elephants...ours was really friendly and looked like he was smiling. Apparently he was still young, only 30 years old (they live to be over 100!)
The waterfall was really cool...although I did jump off it and smacked my bum hard on some rocks (nobody told me that area wasn't safe...Luke jumped off it too but obviously jumped further out than me because yeah...I'm short.) It really hurt and I had ( and still have, FYI) a huge bruise on my one butt-cheek that has made it resemble a plum. Such a good look.

Coulda been worse though, if my legs hadn't have been underneath me I coulda broke them...always look on the bright side.

The caves were really cool, full of thousands of statues of Buddha.
Our guide was telling us why you sometimes see a statue of a fat Buddha...
apparently a monk who was practising Buddhism asked Buddha to make him "ugly" because he was constantly having women throw themselves at him and tempting him, and he wanted to devote his life to Buddhism. As a result, he woke up fat!
The guy told Luke not to get fat.hahaha.
So now we know why we see the fat jolly Buddha laughing his head off sometimes.

Ok, now that's off my chest...XAM NEUA.


The bus there was a nightmare, a local rickety, smelly about to fall apart bus with NO air con, no comfort...overpriced for what we paid to get there and you'd expect a night journey to have a bus that's alteast comfortable.
I got NO sleep.And the second it got dark they turned the music on...

LOUD, ASIAN POP MUSIC....ALL THROUGH THE NIGHT....and didn't turn it off until 9am!!! We arrived in Xam Neua around 11am...the bus kept stopping ALL the time to let people off/on. People were being sick out of the windows because it was such a bumpy ride over the mountains.
The ONLY thing that made this journey worthwhile was getting to open the window (sat at the back away from the puking people of course lol) and look out into the night sky, watching the mountains, little villages and rice paddies pass by.

I got to see one of the most amazing sights on this journey....

Thousands of fireflies lighting up the night outside... it looked like the fields were full of stars! One of the most beautiful things I've ever seen!

Luke saw a baaarn owl sitting in a tree too! haha. He said it was pulling a max face lol!

In Xam Neua it was very remote, like a ghost town...(Newport lol) ...we got there had a nice place to stay, the only thing that got us through the few nights there was watching the film channels ...haha.
There was no tourist places, and only Lao food...so we got to eat like the locals do, which was cool... had noodle soup and one of the best fried rice dishes i've had yet.
But other than that, we were very eager to leave and go into Vietnam!

xx