Sabadee everyone! Apologies for the lack of blogs lately, it's been due to illness and awful wifi in Laos! We've definitely had our fair share of travellers sickness now. So this ones going to be a long one - sorry!

Where to start? Well we've been in Luang Prabang for 5 nights. Last weekend we got a bumpy, jam-packed minibus for 6 hours to get here. We've gotten pretty used to arriving somewhere and searching around guest houses for room in the inn.

Luang Prabang is a quaint little town with lots of mahogany shutters on white buildings and coffee shops - very French inspired. There are two rivers that meet at the top of town - the Mekong and Nam Khan. It's beautiful to have breakfast or lunch at one of the many restaurants that overlook the river with mountains on the other side.

Our favourite time in Luang Prabang is from 4p.m. to dusk. At 4p.m. you hear the monks ringing the temple bells and at sunset you can go and sit at the back of a temple to see them chanting their prayers. Also at sun set, there is a night market that sets up on the main street every evening. We have been enticed to buy a few wonderful things from the Lao people that are keen to get a sale. On our second night we found 'Street Food Street' and enjoyed some Lao meat on a stick and then helped ourselves to loads of noodles and spring rolls which they stir fry and season for you, costing 15,000 kip (£1.22) per large bowl. It was incredibly tasty! For dessert we had a banana leaf full of tiny coconut pancakes.

Yesterday we went on our delayed two day tour; a 6 hour trek on the first day followed by a Homestay at a Khmu village, then an hour trek on the second day followed by kayaking to a waterfall and then down the river for 3 hours back to Luang Prabang.

To start our trek we met our tour guide, Souk, picked up our bottles of water to last us the tour and jumped in a truck that drove us for an hour. From there we got a low boat on the Mekong for ten minutes and got off on the other side of the river to start our trek. The weather was very misty and quite fresh. It was just the two of us and Souk for the trek.

Souk was a great guide, he answered any questions we had and explained lots about the different Lao villages, foods, the mountains and the jungle. It was amusing trying to explain to Souk English things that we take for granted, such as what traffic is (you just don't get traffic in Laos due to lack of vehicles) and what roast dinners and apple pie are. We trekked for about 3 hours with only a short break to eat our breakfast - sticky rice in banana leaf and Lao fruit. The trek was fairly easy to begin with, mostly through countryside and between the mountains but there were a few uphill/up-mountain stretches.

After about 3 hours, we arrived at a Hmong village. Hmong people live in the mountains and inhabit areas 1000m and above (to give you an idea of how uphill our trek was). They speak differently to Lao people so we quickly learnt a few key phrases from Souk. The village was a total of 4 families: 20 people. We were quite shocked to see that the only people there at the time were children, some as young as 1 years' old. Their parents were off farming. As we sat on a bench to eat our lunch (rice with vegetables), the children spread out around us and laid out on other benches a few souvenir type things. We can't explain the overwhelming feeling you have to give them anything you can. It was so difficult to decide which family to buy something from so Steph bought a bracelet from each. As we finished our lunch, the mist started to burn off and the sky turned blue.

We continued our trek up and down terrain, across rivers, and through dense jungle. Something like 80% of Laos is untouched, mountainous jungle so the views were breathtaking. It was much more difficult in the sweltering sunshine!

A few pit stops and many mosquito bites later, we arrived at the Khmu village. Our 6 hour trek was complete! The Khmu village was much bigger with about 200 people living there. It's crazy walking around seeing how little they have, how they live off the land and how they make money. They live in simple huts made of bamboo.

As we walked around the village, you get some quizzical, gaunt looks from the locals, especially the children. They have not seen many Western people before so we smiled and waved, and usually got a similar response along with a hello. There are animals everywhere: pigs, dogs, chickens and goats.

A key way the Khmu people earn money is to collect a certain type of long grass, lay it out to dry in the sunshine and then roll or hit out all of the flower from it. Very tough and time-consuming work. The Chinese buy 1kg for 5,000 kip (40p). There are children as young as 4 years' old contributing to the work. Younger children, maybe 2 or 3 years' old, were looking after the even younger babies.

We took some individually wrapped, hard boiled sweets with us to give to the children. They were a little shy but took a sweet and said thank you in Khmu and bowed. It was cute to see a little girl look for her brother so he could get a sweet too. They really enjoyed them!

We stayed with a family of about 10 and it was nice to see grandparents, parents and the children working together. For dinner we had (more) sticky rice, fried bamboo shoots, and a lemongrass chicken soup. As they only have solar electricity which doesn't last long, everyone is in bed by 9p.m. We retired to our hut at 8.20 just to try and get warm. The temperature had really dropped in the mountains so we slept in all of our clothes under two blankets.

We woke, went to toilet in the hole in the ground and said goodbye to our family. After trekking for an hour, we reached the edge of the Nam Khan river where our kayaks awaited us.

We kayaked for 10 minutes and arrived at the Tad Se Waterfall. It was still nice and early which meant it wasn't very busy. At the waterfall you can also ride and bathe elephants. We chose to go for a ride for 30 mins. Steph decided that our elephant looked like a Nelly. The guide lead us through the jungle for a while and then into the waterfall itself. Our elephant was a little mischievous, often stopping to pick things up from the ground. Once the tour had finished we were able to feed our elephant sugarcanes and bananas - both of which she chomped down quicker than we could feed her. It was an amazing experience to be able to be so close and interact with such a fantastic animal.

After some lunch at the waterfall we set off in our kayaks. The river had quite a fast current however paddling for 3 hours still got the muscles working! A few times we encountered some white water rapids. We were well equipped with life jackets and helmets. Souk made us both laugh when he was explaining how to handle the rapids. He said if you fall in, it is not a problem - "it's ok, you just get back in". Luckily we managed to survive without falling in. Once we had finished our kayaking a tuk-tuk picked us and our kayaks up and took us back to the tour office in the town. We said our goodbyes and thanks to Souk and headed our separate ways.

Tomorrow we are heading to Chiang Mai in Thailand. We will be sad to say goodbye to Laos, such a beautiful place with amazing people.

Steph and Max x