With numb bums galore, we dragged our cases through the streets of Luang Prabang admiring the pretty houses, bakeries and wooden street signs along the way. Immediately so different from Thailand we knew that this was a place we were going to enjoy and looked forward to exploring properly. An added bonus was that for the first time, we could afford the number one place to stay (hooray!) and had managed to book the best room in a quaint guesthouse for a colossal £10 a night! I nearly wept as we were shown to our room... polished teak floors, a huge wooden bed, crisp white linen, TV, fridge and aircon. Even BG, who usually just raises an eyebrow if we end up anywhere hideous or amazing, was pretty impressed with this place.

Luang Prabang is famous for the number of temples in one small town and we were recommended to buy a three day pass to enable us to see them all at our leisure. Three days looking at temples?!?! No thanks very much. Having already seen one in Bangkok, I was confident that we had ticked temples off the list and was really not keen to see another twenty or so that, let's face it, pretty much look the same... Unperturbed, we headed into one of the many travel agencies lining the pretty main street to see what else was on offer, Nothern Laos being a melting pot of excursions and activities. First thing on offer, waterfall trip, BG; "we've seen a waterfall". Next, elephant ride, Me; "they are big, smelly and look muddy". Gross. Next, hiking into Nothern Laos mountains, BG (and this is my fav comment of the trip so far); "I've only got my white converse with me, they'll get ruined". Me; "we don't really do trekking". Next, visit a Laos tribal village, Me; "do they want us visiting them?" Lastly, (tour guide wishing he'd stayed in bed that day), kayaking. Both; that sounds good! Tour guide (visibly relieved), "do want the three, two or one day experience", BG, assessing my upper body strength; is "there not a 12 hour option?" (and I swear all the above did actually happen!).

So, tours clearly not an option for us, we left the travel agency and the poor guide in a state of physical and mental exhaustion and went on our merry way deciding to hire a bike instead. The main street was lined with guys renting bikes (me; "BG get me a pink one") and after walking up and down to check prices (and pinkness) we chose the bikes we wanted. Having adjusted the bikes to our size and needs, we were literally pushing off and the guy told us we would need to leave our passport with him while we had the bikes (we were renting them for three days!). These bikes cost £1 a day to hire and clearly cost about a fiver to buy in the first place, not worth two British passports! Still, no matter how much we argued, he wouldn't take no for an answer. I'm sure I don't need to actually type BG's reaction to this here - it involved lots of #'s *'s etc. We finally found a young guy who was persuaded to give us the bikes (me; "do you really think I'm gonna steal this bike and take it on a plane with me?" - even he couldn't argue with that logic) in exchange for a photocopy of our passports. BG happy that we didn't have to hand over our passports, me happy that my bike was still spectacularly pink, off we went.

Less than ten minutes later, it was clear we'd slightly underestimated the heat of the sun and needed to look for somewhere to rehydrate. I decided that a silk weaving centre was the ideal spot and before BG could question me, took a sharp right down a dirt track to a hidden oasis of fabrics, threads, looms and (by sheer fluke) ice-cream and coffee! A few happy hours were spent looking at silk worms, women doing the most intricate weaving with every limb and digit they had, river views and, of course, an ice-cream or two! Fully refreshed, we did a full loop of the town on bike and after seeing the tourist parts of town, explored all the side streets which revealed a dirtier, busier and far more gritty side to Luang Prabang. Walking through a maze of street markets was an assault on the senses as we saw every type of vegetable, fruit, meat and fish all laid out in the scorching sun, women preparing meals, children and stray dogs running riot and a few men dozing in the sun!

Next day we decided a day of rest was in order and I'd found an outdoor pool a short bike ride away. Upon arrival (after a long bike ride due to the total lack of road name or pool signs) we were charged £1 each to get in, which included a free cocktail! Genius. The pool itself was shabby to say the least, but was surrounded by hammocks and cushions, cheap food and two for one on cocktails (which were only £2 each in the first place). Settling into a shady corner, slightly too close to two stranger-dangers for my liking, I was thoroughly perturbed when the two guys in question started talking to me. Given that they were recommending a particular cocktail, it seemed rude to ignore them and to BG's amusement, we were soon chatting away. Turns out Gonzo and Juan were doing a very similar trip to us. Originally from Buenos Aires, we grilled them for tips on their home city and soon had a great list of things to do and see when we started the second half of our trip. So much for the pool, we ended up spending the whole day sipping cocktails and chatting (having soon discovered that Gonzo and BG were both photographers, Juan and I were delighted to let them talk pixels and give us a break from photo chat for the day). Kindred spirits, we bonded over the fact that none of us had any intention of doing anything physically exerting like trekking while we were away and decided we needed to write a new type of travel book, entitled "Lazy Asia" (which I still think is a great idea and between us and the Argentineans have copyrighted!). We literally got into the pool for twenty minutes right at the end of the day having totally lost track of time. Gutted that the guys were leaving the next day, we agreed to drop them an email when we arrived in Buenos Aires and see if we could maybe meet up.

Returning our bikes later that day revealed that the photocopy of our passport had been lost, thank goodness we'd stuck to our guns and not handed over the real thing, plebs. Later that night we attended a ethnic tribe fashion show (yep, you read that right) at a bar run by a French hippy. Not really sure what we were about to witness, we ordered ourselves a drink and waited for it to start. Well, a bit cheesy and certainly not the most attractive 'models' in the world (they were mostly local college students earning extra cash), it was actually quite amazing to see all the different clothes close up. BG channelled David Bailey for an hour whilst I wondered if there was a pop-up shop at the end selling the clothes we'd seen (sadly not) and we were certainly pleased that we hadn't gone to the effort of a days trek to see the tribes when we could sit in the comfort of a bar and let the tribes come to us!

The rest of our time there was spent totally relaxing, eating great food (including a strawberry jam/vodka cocktail for 50p!), photographing monks at the crack of dawn (I'm sure I don't need to say this, but I was in bed for this bit), visiting the AMAZING night market (if only we had more room in our luggage!) and eating more great food... Definitely our favourite place in the trip so far, we would both strongly recommend coming here for a holiday as it really was quite spectacular...