Luang Prabang is cool! The bars and restuarants here lure you in with twinkling fairy lights, rather than the neon glare of Vang Vieng. There's bustling night market selling all manner of touristy crap, and we even saw some fireworths the first night we were there.

We spent the first couple of days there looking round the Royal Palace Museum and some of the many temples, inclluding one on top of a really big hill - the views made the climb well worth it. I walked halfway down the otherside too, to see the 'Buddha's footprint', which turned out to be a gold patch painted on a rock - hmm... We also got involved with a project called Big Brother Mouse, which aims to help Lao kids to read and to get books out to the remote villages (hardly anyone in Laos owns books it transpires), and we spent a couple of hours helping some college students with their English. Super teacher Shah was in her element, I found it a bit harder, but mostly they just wanted to various words explained to them (Ecclesiastical, anyone? Trust me to get a guy who wanted Buddhist terminology translated!) or to just practice speaking in English (somehow, despite their English not being great, they all seem able to ask 'are you married?', 'do you have boyfriend?'!) so I think I managed ok.

The best thing we did in Luang Prabang though, was a two-day 'Mahout Experience' tour, where we went to an elephant park to learn about elephants and how the mahouts (elephant trainers) look after them. Started off with a ride in a chair on the elephants' backs, then things got significantly less graceful when we had to try to climb onto the elephants' ourselves - let's just say there are some very unflattering photos of the Shah and I clambering up like oafs! Following a ride out into the bush where the elephant we led off to their sleeping place, we took a boat to a waterfall for a bit of swimming and relaxation time. It was abit too cold to properly swim but it was great to chill out and admire the lovely blue pools with various small falls trickling into in them. We stayed in a local viallge that night - after sending the local kids crazy over some balloons that Selina had brough with her. As soon as we gave some to a group of about five, practically the whole village came running out! My favourite part of the trip was elephant bath time the next morning! How do you bath an elephant, you ask? Well, they walked into the river with us on their backs, and then the mahout got them to duck down under the water (with us still sitting on them!), and we had to scrub them with a brush to get them clean (and try not to think about the elephant poo floating past). It was so much fun - it was hard not to imagine the elephants smiling as we did it! After breakfast (cooked for us by the villagers) we kayaked 26km back into town. Great way to admire the scenery, but my arms are still aching now!

After my poor efforts in Vang Vieng, this week's featured fruit is fried riverweed. Not fruit as such, but never mind. It's like seaweed, and comes in small squares that a fried and coverd in seasame seed. Good for a light snackette with beer. It comes with a spicy chutney that we later found out was made from buffalo skins - ew! Bad vegetarain...

Oh, and I finally have a suntan that doesn't come off as soon as I get in the shower! Wahey!

Kim xx