Day 16 - Lets go ride a bike, up to the highest height

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So we are up bright and early as we had planned on renting bikes to explore LP. We went to the street where the night market is and they have loads of stalls with fresh fruit and smoothies, so I got a mango smoothie and G got a selection of fruit, but when she was eating the dragon fruit, all the juice spilled out on made her white runners pink...ooopps!

So the 6 of us went to rent bikes it was a really hot day but being on the bikes was grand cus there was a nice cool breeze. Luang Prabang is beautiful and really easy to get around on bikes, our 1st stop was at the statue of the Red Prince (the figurehead leader of the Lao People's Revolutionary Party) and then to a UXO museum where we learned some really horrifying facts, as below:

Lao PDR is the most heavily bombed country, per capita, in history
Approximately 25% of villages in Laos are contaminated with Unexploded Ordnance (UXO)
More than 580,000 bombing missions were conducted over Laos
Over 2 million tons of ordnance were dropped on Laos between 1964 and 1973
Cluster sub‐munitions or ‘Bombies’ (as they are known locally) are the most common form of UXO remaining
More than 270 million bombies were dropped onto Laos
Up to 30% failed to detonate
Approximately 80 million unexploded bombies remained in Laos after the war
All 17 provinces of Laos suffer from UXO contamination
41 out of the 46 poorest districts in Laos have UXO contamination
Over 50,000 people have been killed or injured as a result of UXO accidents in the period 1964 ‐2008
Over 20,000 people have been killed or injured as a result of UXO accidents post‐war period, 1974‐ 2008

After the museum we went to a market I needed to buy sunglasses, Paul had to buy flip flops cus his broke and Stevo had to buy some cus someone stole his shoes from outside the guest house! Then for some lunch so we stop at this "cafe" (it is someone's living room) so we decide to just order 5 dishes between us. The papaya salad was tasty, the stir fried veg had pork in it!!! and then there was a "meat salad" which was basically offal with bean sprouts through it, needless to say I didn't have any!

Then back on the bikes, there is a cool wooden bridge for just bikes and pedestrians and then we were back to where we started. So shower and change and then to the food alley for some river fish 😊 wrecked after cycling all day so early to bed!

Until tomorrow....

Rx

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