Lovely Luang Prabang! We came here on our last trip and were delighted to find that it hadn't changed that much since 2007. It's such a pretty little place on a peninsula with the Mekong River to one side and the Nam Khan river to the other side. The town has gorgeous old french buildings amongst trees with pink, orange and red blossoms - it also has many temples. We were so lucky to be able to come again, we had prebooked our room through agoda and caught the tuk tuk there. Eleanor and Carolyn were given a flyer for a guesthouse and found out it was the same one that we were heading to. Our room was lovely, we arrived early evening so went out straight away to the daily night market which was much bigger than we remembered and very touristy. We found some good beef noodle soup and then went for a drink at the Hive bar near our guesthouse, they had a breakdancing show which was quite entertaining.

We had a few days in Luang Prabang, we didn't have great weather as it is building up to the wet season but we filled up our time walking around the peninsula, eating croissants from the many bakeries and had a lao massage which we both agreed was the best we have ever had! They were quite violent and crawled on our backs but afterwards we felt so relaxed. One of the nights we went for a drink with Eleanor and Carolyn and we had read that there was a popular bar called Utopia so we went and had a look, it was a bit poncy and full of backpackers lounging on cushions. We had a drink there and there were some other people that were on the slowboat who we started talking to - a mexican bloke called Carlos, an Irish guy called John and Rich from Dorking! There are strict rules in Luang Prabang that bars should shut by 11pm, there is only one place that you can drink until 2am which is a random bowling alley situated a short drive out of town. As we were in a group and had a few beers we thought it would be quite funny to go there and were whisked off in a minivan playing Aqua full volume. We arrived at the bowling alley and it was just full of other backpackers - it was quite a bizarre experience! We actually played a few games and the men got through two bottles of whiskey - strange night!

Our last night was spent climbing up to the temple of Phu Si which has magnificent views over the town, we watched the sun setting over the mekong river - it was lovely, we had one more wander through the night market and ate some more noodle soup.

I think Luang Prabang should be somewhere everyone should try and visit at some time in their lives as its just so magical :-)