After a panicked build-up, the flight to Luang Prabang in Laos from Chiang Mai was actually pretty good. The airport was practically empty and the plane was only half full so I could sweat profusely and curse under my breath at the slightest turbulence in relative privacy.

Met an American chap on the plane called Zeph who was mountain biking with us the previous day.

We stayed on Ban Xieng road at the Phoshoke guesthouse which was pretty chilled out, if a little noisy, but we moved rooms after the first night. Had our first Beerlao on the Mekong as the sun went down which was a good introduction to Laos and moved on to Utopia bar on the river with Zeph for some grub.

Walked around the quaint streets the next day and were really impressed - no wonder this place is a UNESCO site. Stumbled across a wedding so had a good old tourist stop and stare at the happy couple and their brilliant old school wedding car.

We went up the big hill in town to the local temple for sunset and had a great view of the town, thought there were LOADS of other tourists so we left after about fifteen minutes. Almost got to the point of pushing and shoving at one point as people clamoured to take photos - ridiculous.

The Luang Prabang night market is great and we had a walk around in the evening, seems that it's on every night and the locals seem t love it as well. Managed to buy three t-shirts of the same size, which have since turned out to be different sizes - arse. Stumbled across a great street crammed with barbecue food stalls so tucked into some amazing tasting fish cakes, chicken and sausages for ridiculously cheap prices.

Headed out to see Pakou caves the next day via a trip on the Mekong in a small longboat with 4 other people. Boat was a bit wobbly and listed to one side if someone got out of their seat, but got a great view of the scenery. Wooden seats were covered with a cushion about the thickness of piece of fag paper so were glad to get off after 2 hours.

The caves were very average and pretty small with the highlight being that one had over 4,000 statues of buddha - I know that sounds impressive, but believe me it wasn't and certainly not worth even the little money we paid or a numb arse for the following 4 hours post boat seat torture.

Went to the Kuang Si waterfalls in the afternoon and they were superb. Beautiful water and a few different levels with different cascades. We walked all the way up the side to the top of the biggest one and you could see straight down it from the top which was worth the risk of nearly going over the side and the dangerous steps up and down.

We then got to the bottom and went for a swim in one of the cool pools via the awesome rope swing (take note cheetham, we both did it twice). The water was pretty cold and we both felt something weird nibbling on our toes so we didn't hang around in it too long. The hardest bit was probably getting hold of the rope with the stick thing.

To round a perfect afternoon off I managed to leave my trainers behind - arse (again).

Hit the market stall street again in the evening in preparation for the trip to Vang Vieng in the morning.