Luang Prabang - the old capital of Laos -

Luang Prabang really was the jewel in the Laos crown. Peaceful (despite the thousands of tourists that come year upon year) and relaxing and home to some 500 monks. The town is scattered with Buddhist temples and lies along the Mekong river...in it's centre lies Mount Phoussi. The 6 hour minibus journey had it's high points and low points along the picturesque hills and valleys (with Vanessa asleep on one shoulder and a big German asleep on the other) and Luang Prabang was a welcome destination.

The monks really were the focal point here. Their bright orange robes contrasting amazingly against the white and grey backdrops of temple walls and houses. The main event was the daily giving of alms to the monks. Every morning, locals would line the pavements, kneeling with gifts of rice, flowers and sweets in their hands as a spectacular line of 500 monks would file past to except their gifts. As you can imagine this was a really amazing site and hence the camera went into overtime. However, we did try to remain respectful to the ceremony as the many posters around Luang Prabang had requested. We remained across the street and watched from afar...unfortunately, bus loads of European and Japanese tourists weren't always so discrete. Many of the monks were young and of high school age. Every buddhist in Laos ends up doing at least a year as a monk and many of them choose to combine this with high school and their studies. So as we walked around the temples the monks would come up and chat to us to practice their English.

One day we took a trip out to some waterfalls at the end of a very long and dusty dirt track road. Fortunately, we were in a mini bus but we passed plenty of people who chose to take a tuk tuk and arrived covered in dirt and pretty dishevelled (worse for them it was the same price!!). The waterfalls were fantastic. I (Andy) dived in and swam around in the beautiful blue-green water. The temperature wasn't so beautiful...but in the end it was so cold that you couldn't feel it so I coped ok! It was a great place and a great site to see...proving that Luang Prabang wasn't just temples and monks.

Vanessa's favourite part of Luang Prabang? - The Night Markets. To be fair they were very good. At 5pm each night locals and Laotians from surrounding villages would descend on the main street with baskets and boxes of handicrafts, textiles and beerlao t-shirts and lay out their goods on mats. The street was nicely lit up with individual lamps next to each street vendor. Here, we bought a few presents for friends in Oz and Vanessa invested in more scarves and fisherman's pants. Also here we found the cheapest food we'd had so far in Asia. Fit as much raw food on your plate as can and a woman cooks it for you there and then on the street in a big wok...all for about half a US dollar!

Other great things in Luang Prabang? A massage and steam room at the red cross massage...and chocolate croissants at a cafe called Joma's. Not so good? the visit to Pak Ou caves really isn't worth the 2 hour boat trip upstream where we nearly went overboard as our dodgy driver hit a rock....

Having travelled up ahead of them...we met up again with George and Tanya. One night with a few other friends (including Martin and Catherine - due in Sydney in March!) we went out to a place the other side of Mt Phoussi called LaoLao Barbeque. We had an awesome night with ten of us cooking our own food around a bbq dome with a soup troth around the side. We had a good laugh recounting tales of our travels and debating the best way to get to Chiang Mai. Was it to be the dreaded speed boat? the slow and uncomfortable slow boat or dodgy Laos airlines?

Well, unfortunately, Laos airlines was all booked up and we'd heard some horror stories of people being killed on the fast speed boat (as well as having experienced first hand seeing tourists pass us on a boat trip in a speed boat with crash helmets and virtually no room for any luggage), cramped and getting ripped off on the slow boat. Some interesting stories were recalled and harrowing details of people falling off and having to be picked up later were also found on the Internet.
So...eventually we decided to end our Laos experience with a flight back to Vientiane and a bus trip from there across the Friendship bridge and then upto Chiang Mai.

Laos was a fantastic country, not taken over by the tourist fever and the money grabbing mentality we'd seen in other areas of Asia. Luang Prabang was idyllic and Vang Vieng provided one of the best days of our trip so far.