Luang Prabang was a great little place, we stayed in a hostel called Spicy Laos which was boiling hot but nice and sociable.

The markets were great fun to wander, we had the best baguette sarnies jam packed with food for about 75p and fresh made juices (lime and mint was the best for about 35p). We survived on this for the few days we were in LP. We eventually met up with Alex and Steph and since it was raining when we met we had no choice but to get drunk...........! We found a really cute bar called Utopia, overlooking the river and set back in lots of greenery and drank loads of cheap, cold, big bottles of Beer Lao (amazing!).

As we were only there a couple of days we didn't do much touristy stuff, but on our last day we went to the AMAZING Kouang Si Waterfall. We didn't do a tour but hired a tuk tuk to take the four of us there for about 2 quid return and then just paid the 1 pound entrance fee. At the beginning you walk through a bear sanctury for rescued black bears. They have huge hammocks to swing around in which is pretty funny. Then you reach the waterfall, it is a three tier waterfall with lots of pools that you can swim in. The water is not poweful like Niagara or Iguazzu but it glides over smooth rocks. The water is bright turquoise and looks stunning. Right at the top the final pool has a 50m high cascade falling into it from the jungle. The bottom pool has a rope swing, a favourite for travellers, Alex had a go, but he 'forgot' to let go of the rope and did a 360 degree smash into a tree, now there are 2 out of 4 of us with dodgr ribs. Some people who saw him there but don't know him refer to him as tarzan as we overheard in Vientiane. ha ha ha.

That night we caught the most horrendous bus of our whole trip. The roads in Laos are notoriously horrible and we had a rather frightening and very bumpy/uncomfortable journey. We ended up with the four of us on the back row squashed in by a poor Lao man in the middle of us all. The seats were tilted reuslting in us all sat on eachothers kneeas and it was stifling (even though it was pitch black as it was the middle of the night), also being on the back row two of us had no head room and had to sit at an angle, excellent! It was all quite funny to be honest, oh except the speed of the huge bus being thrown around the roads with steep drops on either side of the road and then there were the painful bumps. Anyway, we eventually arrived safe and sound, even though the horrible, grumpy bus driver threw the four of us out a half hour walk from the town at 4am with no taxi's to be found ha ha!!! Meanie. He also tried to drive off when only I was off the bus and Adds, Alex and Steph were still on grrrrrrrrrr!!

We managed to find a room for 4 of us even though it meant waking up the fuzzy headed hostel owners. It was really cheap and we all got a few hours kip before moving onto the main street in Vang Vieng.

Hope you're all enjoying your second long weekend in a row and enjoy watching the wedding. Must say we're gutted to be missing it........errr ok, maybe not.

xxxx