On Sunday, we had another minibus ride which was ear popping and a wee
bit travel sick inducing but with amazing scenery, though we also had
to endure the awful music videos that our guy insisted on playing at
full blast! For whatever reason, we hadn't expected the road north to
ancient Luang Prabang to be so mountainous and windey, but it made
sense once we saw the scenery en route and passed through the remotest
of tiny villages which offered a more authentic insight into the way
the locals live than any kind of organised tour ever could. And then
we learned that the road hadn't even been sealed until the 1990's -
this place has long been inaccessible! The nicest part of the trip
was when we stopped for a lunch break where this cute little girl
followed us around asking for crisps! (I say cute but she probably
does it every day - chancer!)

We found a guesthouse right by the Nam Khan river in town, and after
pottering around we went for tea at a packed restaurant called Lao Lao
Garden (after negotiating the steps of death that added to my pain
from VV - I still maintain I'm not clumsy!) where we literally got the
last candle lit table up the garden. We cooked our very own
traditional Lao BBQ (complete with water buffalo) to the tunes of what
may as well have been Galaxy FM back home! Then by 11.15pm we had to
get kicked out as there is a midnight curfew in town!

We had a leisurely start to Monday but eventually got ourselves up to
the top of Phu Si for some brill views out over the city and the hills
that wrap around it. We eventually found the somewhat underwhelming
Buddha footprint and then walked back down and past a load of orange-
robed monks to find our way to the Royal Palace Museum.

After that, we felt enough was enough for one day and so stopped for
an 8,000 kip big bottle of beer overlooking the Mekong - the cheapest
yet! In the evening we actually made it out past the end of our
street and walked round the night markets (where Hutch paid £7 for a
necklace thinking it was 70p because she lost track of the number of
zeros needed to convert!) before being a tad lame and having an early
night - it must be the heat!

We woke up on Tuesday to the sound of rain and cold clouds everywhere
- literally the first bit of solid rain that we have had since Cairns
in mid January! That kinda scuppered our plans to go to the
waterfalls nearby which is supposed to be great, so instead we just
caught up on the blog and then tried one of the local specialities for
lunch - Luang Prabang sausage served with 'jaew bawng', which is a
thick condiment made of chillies and dried buffalo skin!

We tried to at least put the afternoon to good use and braved the rain
to check out some other Wats and wandered through the laneways which
are full of character with the French architecture under the shadow of
trees. It was really nice walking round despite the rain, and we even
got greeted to a 'Bonjour' from a little girl coming out of school!

With the weather as it was, we went for a massage at a place that had
been recommended to us. To start with there was that awkward few
moments where you can't understand if they are telling you to strip
off into the small towel they have handed you or not, and then I
wasn't too thrilled when it became clear that I was gonna have this
little Lao dude smother me in lemongrass scented oil. Let's just say
that eventually I managed to block out that fact and concentrate on
the relaxing sounds of building work out the back!

Feeling surprisingly relaxed, on the walk home we had this baby who
must only have known a few words be encouraged by her mum to shout out
'falang' at us!

Tuesday evening we kept simple but sweet - having one of the nicest
ones yet. First we had more quality local water buffalo cuisine back
at Lao Lao and then headed to the chilled out trendy bar Utopia where
we laid back and overlooked the Mekong River in possibly the best bar
we have been to yet! Good job we had a few beers as that night the
rain just got heavier and even blew the window shutters of our room
open!

Nothing had changed by Wednesday morning and so we had an uber long
lie in and then basically spent all day in a cosy warm Belgian bar
drinking beer which made us feel nice and homely!! The weather was so
bad that the Hmong night Market was basically abandoned and we were
left to haggle in the rain with the few that were brave enough to stay
out. It was literally like Manchester weather and being cold back in
SGI, and in the room we had to resort to whipping out our sleeping
bags and zipping them together to make one big bag which was actually
quite cosy!

Our last morning in LP on Thursday was spent back at our favourite
restaurant for more amazing local food and warming our hands over a
clay pot of hot coals, before heading to the smallest international
airport ever and boarding our propellor airplane to Vietnam!

Although our time in Luang Prabang was a bit up and down because of
the weather, the food and bars in particular made up for it and the 10
days or so we have spent in Laos have been brilliant and are kinda sad
not to be able to stay longer and see more - especially with 80p large
Beer Lao's!