Woke up late, buffet breakfast at hotel (robin was pleased). Checked out and walked with our backpacks to our next hotel, which included a slight detour to someone's front room, they quickly pointed out that the hotel was further up the road!

When we got outside the hotel a 2 year old child ran up to me and attached himself to my leg, which was cute, until i had to walk a few steps with him not letting go. He then went to robins leg for another hug! The hotel is more like someones house with a few rooms to rent, but it's quaint and nice. Our room is tiny with no glass in the windows and no lock on our door (which leads onto a communal dining area), luckily I bought a padlock. It's only £7 a night, not bad!

We then rented some very rickety bikes for the day for 15,000 kip each (about £1.20). We cycled around Laos which was fun, especially as we followed the locals example and just swerved all over the road, didn't give way, etc.

We stopped by the riverside for cake we'd bought with us, only to be joined by two local kids (about 3 and 4 yrs old) who were filthy and obviously very poor. After them staring at me for 10 mins I gave the little girl a cake, they started sharing it and then the girl thought better and ran off with it!

We the chained up our bikes and went across the bamboo bridge (see pic). It's as unstable as it looks and Robin managed to put his size 12s through the bamboo as soon as he stepped on it, he proceeded a bit more carefully!

On the other side was a little village with an amazing bar on the riverside at the top of the hill. It had lots of little treehouse type seating areas with cushions and we settled in a really cosy little area. We ordered drinks and got a game of scrabble off the shelf to play. half the tiles were made of wood where they'd been lost and replaced. We were then joined by a little kitten who kept jumping on both of us. After the initial fear of rabies (!) we let her join us for the afternoon and she kept jumping on us and the scrabble board meowing until Robin fed her some cinnamon bun and she seemed to calm down a bit.

After this bar we then headed back across the bridge where we found another place to laze around in! We went back to the place on the river that served huge bottomless cups of coffee (including decaf, yay!), and sat in the sun for the rest of the afternoon, so I'm looking very pink and am sporting a suitably festive red nose!

We then cycled back to return the bikes and change into jumpers for the evening (it gets v cold).

We went for a really delicious dinner, I had green curry noodles (soooo good) and Robin couldn't help but draw attention to himself by ordering a sizzling plate which they flambé in the middle of the restaurant and it then streams smoke all the way to the table!

We are now sitting in a really cool bar called Utopia, it was interesting trying to find it, we basically saw a poster at the top of this road pointing left to a really cool bar, so we headed down there, then there was a sign pointing down a little dark road, we walked down there and we're met by yet another sign and another and another, the roads getting smaller and darker at every turning. I was convinced that it was just a way to lure stupid tourists to a desolate place to mug them!

However, the bar is really cool and I have an enormous fishbowl sized glass of red wine and we're watching short films on the big screen so all is good. However, Robin is now dragging me to a bar to watch football (I have a book with me thank god!).

Tomorrow we have booked a trip to some caves and a waterfall so looking forward to that.

Loving luang prabang at the mo.