So the long awaited arrival to Luang Prabang has come by so quickly. It seems like yesterday when we were in India with Katrina and Rachel when they recommended the waterfalls at Luang Prabang and we were thinking, shall we go to Laos again?....sure
We arrived at silly o clock around 5am I think, way too early to speak and again getting dropped off away from the town, so after a short tuk-tuk ride and our lungs filled with diesel fumes we arrived at our guesthouse for £3 a night...That day we had nothing planned apart from to sleep! The night bus was a seated bus with what seemed like no suspension so again, no sleep! (since this we have purchased some valium to do the trick).
We walked around and down the river. Having followed the Mekong river all the way from 4000 Islands, Champasak, Pakse and Savannahket we feel like buddies now, he's always at our side.
We bumped into Adam who yet again has changed their plans, then we just happened to come across a bar that sold a large Beer Lao for 7500kip..bargains!! so that's where we settled for the rest of the day and were busy planning our next few days in sunny Luang Prabang.
We had planned to go to the waterfalls the next day. We deliberately bought our tickets from a guy who said under any circumstances we can change when we go, so we would definately go on a sunny day. 10am we got up and saw the clouds, and thinking that going on friday 13th might not be the best idea, we cancelled it and arranged to go the day after. This was a definite schoolboy error...They also did a trip there at 1.30pm and by this time it was beautiful sunshine and boiling hot! we got a swift pace on to say we would go then but arriving at 1.32pm we had missed it.....that's not the worst part. As we had now booked our waterfall visit for the next day it meant this would be the day where we would climb the mountain to see the view of Luang Prabang. Instead of swimming around we were now halfway up, climbing a mountain!!
Although the views were awesome, it was wayyy too hot for climbing...After kicking ourselves the whole way up and down the mountain we slowly got over it and tried to look on a positive side...."atleast now we're going tomorrow, we still get to look forward to it"...that was about it...
We had found some food stalls which have to be mentioned on here purely because they were amazing!...in all 5 months of being away I have seen more chicken feet and heads than I have chicken breasts...and there it was all boneless and freshly cooked on a bbq!!! I felt like we were back at the Wains' household having a bbq on a saturday night! That was lunch and tea sorted. That wasn't it either, it got better, they also had whole fish on the bbq for £1!
The next day I finally got up at 5.30am to go and see the monks receiving alms from the locals. I had planned to get up the previous 2 mornings but never made it, bed always seemed the better option. Ofcourse I went solo, Sar once again gave in to the bed option!
I was glad I saw it, there were sooo many monks about and so young, it's as if they are in hiding in the day, there was absolutely loads coming from everywhere! Some lady was giving 1000kip and some rice to every monk that passed her...more money than sense, in a few days she'll be regretting that decision...
After getting some snaps and monked out I returned at 6.30 to go back to sleep...
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10 o clock came around way too quickly and we got up to go see the waterfall. So far the weather was holding out, we got our baguettes on the way and caught our tuk-tuk. We picked up a few others and just as they sat down and we set off, it rained!...poo!!
Turned out we had a Don Self (Prison Break Cop) lookalike onboard with us, who thought he was the big man. The whole 50minute ride he talked and talked about his work/business in Dubai...That's what you want to talk about when you're on holiday isn't it?...I was going to mention I used to work at M&S and we both decided to jack in our jobs and come travelling but I think he would have died....seriously
Feeling pretty ill from his lectures (We knew pretty much all about his new website by now) and the diesel fumes we had inhaled from the dear little tuk-tuk struggling to climb the hill, we finally arrived.
Luck was in our favour too....sunshine!!! It was beautiful, and dry! there had been no rain - perfect!!
We went to the large waterfall first which was sooo impressive and then made our way down to the smaller pools to swim in. 1 had a rope swing in it which was delightful and the other was ice cold!
Sar had a dip after being pressurised into going in and well, she thought she was going to die!...as Sar gets out of the water, teeth chattering and her arms flapping around her face, she says (deadly serious) "now I know how it would feel to freeze to death!"...haha...of course!!
As soon as we left at 3pm, the heavens opened! What timing! That night we decided to have a whole BBQ fish (the biggest we could find) and a bowl of noodles (all for £1.50) to share for tea back at the guesthouse on the balcony (sure). That's when our chopsticks we had stolen in China came in handy...sooo good - a great steal!
The next morning I got up to see the monks again, something about it amazed me, maybe it's how religion is so big over here compared to back at home. Although this time it wasn't as good as there were lots of tourists joining in, giving alms which ruined the authenticity of it. Nevertheless I got some better pictures.
We got bikes out after being inspired from talking to an Aussie guy who is cycling round S.E Asia, and decided we would bike to the bus station (3km away), no irony meant, (we refused to pay the prices the guesthouses were charging) to book our tickets to Vang Vieng. A lot of uphill and it was so hot but we were determined!
We had a bike round and then stopped for a beer...Before we knew it, time was up and the bikes were due back, it was good fun.
Our last day consisted of nothing apart from heading to the pharmacy for Sar's eye (it's all red and puffy), buying BBQ chicken, fruit shakes and baguettes (we have learnt, if you want a baguette with lots of filling, go to the largest lady's stall...she made the best sarnies) and finished it all off with a few Beer Lao's.
All in all Luang Prabang was awesome...our next stop on the adventure Tuuuuuubing!!
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