Laos

10 January 2016
Our hotel provided free airport transfers and since we had a late morning pickup, we had plenty of time to pack and compress our ‘world’ into 20kgs….again! When it was time, were told that our ride had arrived and we walked out towards a mini-van which was parked out front. "Oh No!", exclaimed the receptionist, and pointed to a Tuk Tuk. Our taxi was a Tuk Tuk!! I couldn't believe it. There was barely enough room for us, but in went our luggage, guitar, back packs and then we squeezed in to what little space there was left!! I hung on for dear life while David hung on to our luggage in case it slid off the 'vehicle'. Despite our misgivings, we arrived safe, sound (so did our luggage) and ahead of schedule at Siem Reap airport which was small, but surprisingly clean and modern. My only criticism was that they could have done with a coffee shop in the check-in area, as we had to wait an hour or so before our desk

opened. We had lunch near our gate, which was good but overpriced by Asian standards. We flew to Pakse in Laos where we disembarked for about twenty minutes until the plane was cleaned (?) and we took on more travellers. We arrived in Luang Prabang at 6pm where we took a shared minibus to our hotel.

We chose our guesthouse because it was in a great location; right across from a temple where we could see the collection of alms by buddhist monks, and within walking distance from the old French quarter which is a UNESCO heritage.

The guys at reception had no record of our booking, but luckily we had our hotels.com receipt and despite their insistence that they didn't collaborate with this website, we were grudgingly given our room key. My heart sank! The room was on the ground floor at the back and had no balcony. It seemed filthy with a horrible musty smell and I wondered if they had given us this room deliberately. David promptly went back to reception and got us a better room with a balcony overlooking the temple and at least this one didn’t smell. We walked down the street to a nice restaurant where we had dinner. It was so great not to have to ride a scooter or take a tuk tuk for dinner.

11 January 2016
At 6 am every morning, hundreds of Buddhist monks of all shapes, sizes and ages, emerge from temples in and around Luang Prabang and walk silently through the streets of the city. Dressed in orange robes, they collect food for their daily meal from locals seated quietly and respectfully by the side of the road. We set our alarm for 05:45 so that we could watch the Alms Giving Ceremony from our balcony. It was still dark so I couldn't get good quality pictures but it was an impressive spectacle, despite this, and worth waking up early for. I have to say, though, the peaceful silence that we had anticipated was marred by the incessant chatter of many, many Chinese and Japanese tourists posing in front of the parade of monks and taking photos with their hi-tech flashes.

I think I neglected to mention that sleeping on our hotel bed was like sleeping on a slab of granite. No, I’m not exaggerating! As a result of this, I had woken up with a very painful lower

back and hip. David also woke up complaining of a dodgy stomach so after waiting around for a while, to see if we were both fit enough to leave our room, we went and got breakfast at a Scandinavian bakery close by. I had forgotten how good scrambled eggs, coffee and croissants tasted. We spent the rest of the day wandering around the Old town, visiting silk weavers and climbing (just me) up Mount Phousi to see views of Luang Prabang. The old town is pretty, clean and made us forget we were in Asia for a moment….just a moment...because when we got off the main drag and walked towards the Mekong River, all the garbage which had obviously been removed from the town streets (UNESCO and all) looked like it had been dumped there.

All in all it was a pleasant day and we found a tuk tuk driver who would take us the next day to Kuang Si Waterfalls, which are a ‘must-see’ apparently. We had dinner at a different restaurant, again within walking distance (did I tell you how great that is?). Towards the end of the meal I started to get stomach cramps. Uh oh!!! I rushed back to our hotel room and spent the rest of the evening and part of the night in the bathroom. Seems we both have a case (mine worse than David's) of TD although we have no idea where it came from.

12-13 January 2016
We weren’t too comfortable leaving our room on the 12th which gave us a little time to recover. So nothing to write about.

Today (the 13th) we felt well enough to go and see the only other two things on our list of ‘must-sees’. The weather forecast was good (no rain) so we decided to take advantage of it. We had ‘hired’ a Tuk Tuk off the street to come and pick us up from our hotel and take us to Kuang Si Waterfalls. We had read that these were definitely worth seeing and they were only about an hour away from where we were staying.

We arrived at Kuang Si around 10ish just before the large tour groups arrived, so we had the place almost all to ourselves. The waterfalls were a short trek from where we left our Tuk Tuk and through a bear rescue centre where they save endangered bears. I have to tell you, I have seen many waterfalls on my travels and yet I think these are probably the most spectacular. The main fall is 60 metres (200ft) high and falls down into many levels cascading down into

pools of an incredible turquoise colour. We walked up to the base of the main falls and while David rested his knee, I walked or should I say climbed, up the height of the falls to the very top. Quite a climb, but well worth doing.

When we were done admiring and taking a thousand photos, we walked back to our Tuk Tuk and asked him to take us to the part of the Mekong river where we could take a boat across to the Pak Ou Caves. It was a drive of about an hour and a half, but what we didn’t know was that the last 30 minutes were on a pot-hole ridden, dirt road. We bounced along, hanging on for dear life to the metal frame of our Tuk Tuk, dreading to think what this was going to do to our backs. We finally made it to the river and got a small boat rather like an over-sized canoe with a little engine, across to the other side where the boatman would wait to take us back after we had seen the caves.

Pak Ou Caves, full of buddhas of all shapes, sizes and colours, are in the side of a mountain on the Mekong River. We read somewhere that people brought their damaged buddhas to this final resting place. We climbed up the steps to the first cave which was quite small. It was unusual, quirky and yet strangely exotic to see so many buddhas in a cave. The view from the cave itself was pretty spectacular. We had read reviews from people who found this cave underwhelming and advised going up to the second cave. Since we like the first cave so much, we figured that the next one would be even better, so we trudged up what seemed like a thousand more steep steps and actually found this one underwhelming. It was larger than the first and pitch dark. Even with a torch, it was pretty hard to see anything so we didn’t stay long and headed back down to our waiting boat.

We were unwilling to bounce around all the way back to our hotel on the Tuk Tuk, so, after asking around for a while, we found a group of Brazilian tourists, who had come on a big boat from Luang Prabang, and asked them if we could go back with them instead. They were lovely people and after getting permission from their tour guide, and paying off our Tuk Tuk driver, we joined them on their boat. It had soft, comfortable seats and even ‘beds’ where you could rest for the 2 hour ride down the river back to the town. The boat ride on the Mekong was smooth (YAY!), comfortable and scenic and seemed to take less than the stipulated 2 hours. Guess we were enjoying ourselves! :)

14-15 January 2016
14th - Our granite mattress didn't let up on my back and, I guess, all the climbing I did the day before didn't help much either. Anyway I was pretty much out of action on the 14th so I took painkillers and we walked around town and down streets we hadn't taken before. Luang Prabang is a pretty town set on a peninsula between 2 rivers (the Nam Khan and the Mekong), with a strange mix of old French colonial and Asian buildings, separated intermittently by the occasional gilded buddhist temple. It is surrounded by beautiful, verdant mountains, through which 'cafe au lait' coloured rivers and their tributaries snake.

15th - We had asked the hotel to order a taxi to take us to the airport in the early afternoon for our flight to Hanoi. Once again, instead of the mini-van I was expecting, we had a 'scooterized' Tuk Tuk although this one was a little bigger than the one in Siem Reap and actually quite comfortable unless we hit the inevitable potholes...