Laos is such a laid-back country, even more so than you can imagine! Even more sleepy than Jen (if that's possible!). Although landing here from Hanoi was a pretty scary experience; we were on such a small plane and as it was time to land it just nose-dived onto the landing strip after circuling erractically a few times! Bad.

As Vic and Jen were waiting on Sal to back to join them, we spent the day (well an hour or so) riding around the town on bikes which was fun although painful! The town is the type of place that saps all energy from you so it's important to keep going!!! Once Sal was back with us, we gave her a couple of days to get over her 7 flight round trip!!!

Couple of days later we went on a trekking and kayaking trip just outside Luang Prabang! It was a good one...

We started trekking and after about 2 mintues we had to take our trainers and socks off to walk through the mud (which was like walking in melted chocolate but with the uncertainty of what lay beneath!). We trekked up this massive incline and that pushed us all to our limits but we eventually arrived at this little village to eat lunch, the sun was beating down! The kids here were so cute, somehow Sal mustered up the energy to play tag with them and try and teach them some clapping routines...she's a natural!!!

After lunch we carried on hiking, climbing, jumping in streams and generally getting muddy and wet! Once again, the scenery in Laos is amazing. Loads of mountains, paddy fields, waterfalls, random water buffalos and massive butterflies everywhere! Its fab.

We arrived at a village in the mountains to stay overnight just in time as the heavens opened! The villagers are used to having travellers come to stay but still the children come out in mass to see you and want 'candy' off you! We walked round the village while Sal handed out sweets to all the kids. They look so cute, we wished we had new clothes to bring the children rather than a bag of sweets though!

Bed time couldn't come soon enough for us, we would've gone to bed before 7pm given the opportunity! Our guides Puma and Aire cooked us dinner, a veg soup dish and some sticky rice... after dinner we played a few games of cards then it was time to get settled in our huts for the night. The mossies got us big time!!!!

Next day we trekked a while then got onto the kayaks and paddled down the river to the waterfall. They were great it wasn't hot that day but as we were soaking anyway we jumped in and played around swimming in our life jackets and helmets-funny! We managed to get up onto the waterfall which was great!

Kayaking the rest of the way back was pretty heavy going, tackling a few grade two rapids (5 being highest) as we used up more energy (that we'd all run out of by that point!) Unfortunately Vic has paired up with Christoph this German guy in our group that was more interested in soaking up the scenery than helping paddle through the rapids!

Once back on dry land we decided to treat ourselves to a nice hotel for the night after all our hard work. It was a fab trip, the guides made it really funny too. We look forward to pushing ourselves to the limit again soon!