Our plans to go to the 4000 Islands, down South, changed, as it was going to be a very long journey and heard alot of horror stories getting buses down there..plus the cost of getting down and then having to come all the way back up north again to cross over to Vietnam! So unfortunately as beautiful as it's meant to be here, we had to give it a miss so decided to go further up North to Luang Prabang.
We had a 6 hour mini bus journey where me and Amy sat in the front and my seat happened to be a hard, booster seat which was sooo uncomfortable! The road snaked round left to right left to right for probably about 5 hours of the journey..which after a while made me feel very sick, but stopping off for lunch and toilet breaks broke it up a bit.
We arrived in Luang Prabang late afternoon and got to our little guesthouse which is probably the worst place we have stayed in so far, but the cheapest so cant complain too much at £7 a night! We put our bags down and went for a little explore around the town. Was very different to what I was expecting actually. Is almost like a little French town with a cute little row of boutique looking shops, bakeries and a lovely little night market.
The food in Laos really is amazing! not very different from Thailand but just so fresh and..nice! Pad Thai is amazing and you can never go wrong with chicken fried rice -yum! Meals are costing us about £3 each with a drink so not bad at all. We bought a few little paintings from the night market, bartering all the way ofcourse. Is sooo much easier to barter here than in Thailand which makes it more fun. They will ask for 200,000 kip (£20) and you can at least half that straight away.
The town is fairly chilled out with most bars and restaurants closing by 11.30/12 so we have taken it easy and enjoyed relaxing.
Yesterday we got up to find it was cloudy and cold..again! which was very annoying as theres not a great deal to do here as it is, but after a couple of hours the sun decided to come out so we went on a little adventure down our road, see another bloomin' temple, had some lunch by the Mekong River and got in a tuk tuk to go to the waterfalls. Along the way we picked up 5 others, 3 guys from Canada and a couple from New Zealand so was swapping travel stories on the way.
Before you walked up to the waterfalls you passed a Bear Rescue Sanctuary where they save these black Asian bears from bear bile farms :( they basically use the bears for there bile for asian medicines which is gross, so these bears had been saved! yayy!! very cool watching them play up on there climbing frames, wrestling one another, they looked alot happier than the bears you see back home in the zoo!
We then walked our way up to the waterfalls and wow it was stunning!! I dont think I've ever seen such blue water! We had a nice refreshing swim and a beer and walked right to the top as the waterfalls tiered all the way down into seperate little pools. Was a very nice day out and met some nice people.
We spent the evening organising our next stop and after a while of bad internet and not knowing much else about Laos we have decided to move onto Vietnam next and are having to suffer a 24hour bus ride (which normally means even longer here) all the way to Hanoi! Some people told us to go up north for trekking but its even colder up there and to be quite frank we are sick of the cold and are losing our tans fast! so will do some trekking in Vietnam instead.
We went out for a bite to eat last night and are trying to be extra good rationing our money so ordered one chicken rice and one drink between us haha! and I think the guys felt so sorry for us they bought over a bowl of peanuts for us too, how embarrasing! We had a few games of pool with some Laos guys who were trying to get us to bowling as its the thing to do here but we saved our pennies and called it a night.
luang prabang town - French looking shops
yummy noodles for £2!
our goody bag from the night market
me outside the night market
another temple!
"hello" in Laos
by the Mekong River
Mini monks!! :)
shadows!
by the waterfalls
waterfalls
stunning view
haha the peanuts we got given with our poor meal!
asian bear
having a stroll to find the bakery!
a walk along the river
doing!!
Brownilocks and the 5 bears
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