Hello from Luang Prabang!!
Our journey from Nong Khiaw wasn't nearly as bad as our previous bus journey. The roads seems to have a lot more paved parts, which was good. On arriving, we instantly had a good feel about the city. It wasn't manic, it was actually quite peaceful and had a chilled out sort of feel to it. We found a guest house for a decent price, seemed to be spider free haha so we were happy. It was mid afternoon so we decided to rent some bicycles and cycle around the city to see what it had to offer.
We stumbled across a nice little travel agency and decided to ask about some tours for the following day. We got a good deal and decided to go visit the nearby cave and the the waterfall in the afternoon, so we were sorted. The rest of the afternoon was spent seeing some of the cities temples and just generally looking around. The temples were not very impressive to ones we have seen before but the city itself is really nice. At night we set off to see the night market. It was completely different from all other night markets we have been to, not much of your fake designer gear and people shouting for you to look at their stuff. It was all hand made crafts people were selling and some of it was really nice. Jonny ended up buying some pretty cool bracelets type things and thats when we banged into Matt and Cassie again (the American couple) so we had a long talk with them about the previous nights adventure but they had a flight the following morning so we couldn't go for drinks or anything so we said out goodbyes, again haha.
The following day we set off on our boat to see the cave. We stopped half way at a local whiskey village where they make "Laos Laos" and many other local whiskeys. There were again many hand made crafts being sold and Shay ended up buying a Pashmina for about £2, the lady told her it take about 2 full days to make one pashmina. We couldn't believe the types of alcohol that was on sale here. They had bottles of whiskey with snakes inside, we were told this increased the strength of the alcohol. There were also ones with scorpions and bear claws inside.....crazy!! On arriving it looks really impressive with a massive white staircase leading up to it. But when you were inside it was fairly small, the only different thing about it was it had 4,000 Buddha monuments all over. Was really cool, but not really worth the 1/2 hour boat ride there and then back again.
Once we got back, we then set off to see the waterfall. It was really good, the water from it was crystal clear. It wasn't the biggest waterfall but was really nice. There was a rope swing that heaps of people were swinging from and jumping into the water. Overall it was a good day out. At night we went out for some food along the riverside and quickly learned that we will never be doing that again. The place was swarming with flies and mosquitos. We ate our food as quickly as we could so we could leave haha. Lesson learned lol.
Tomorrow we are off to Vang Vieng by bus and spending a few nights there to try the famous "tubing" both really looking forward to it.
J+B