Luang Prabang

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A bumpy 7 hour bus ride through some incredible mountains and we arrive in Luang Prabang.
Luang Prabang is a unesco world heritage site. It houses a substantial amount of temples, some new some very old. The population here is 70,000 people and I'm certain 25% of that is made of the monks that live in the temples. Its a beautiful city, with nice mix oc ancient temples meets french colonial architecture (Laos was colonized by the french at one time) all framed by the lush jungle mountains in which it rests.
Right off the bus we catch a tuk tuk into town and land in a nice guest house on the river. Though the guy at the bus station lead us to believe the rooms were 70,000 kip but of course when we got there all that was available were the 120,000 kip rooms. $20 a night is a little steep but the room was nice and we didnt really want to go looking for another with our bags so we settled in, had a shower and headed out to get something to eat and drink. Luang Prabang has some incredibly nice restaurants. We visited three (two for drinks then one for food) all of which were multi-tiered places that were mostly outside, surrounded with palm trees and other lush jungle plants that were filled with hanging lanterns it makes for a pretty relaxed environment to drink your large $1.25 beers. We ordered a Laos bbq, which is similar to a korean/japanese bbq place back home with the exception that its bbq+broth. It was pretty amazing and incredibly cheap.
The next day we wandered around a bit trying to decide on the activities we wanted to do for our short stay in town. We wanted to do a big trip out of town to see the buddha cave but knew we got up a little late in the day for that so we ended up going out to check out one of the two waterfalls around town, which were pretty beautiful. We had a dip in the water which may have been a bit nicer if not for the 50 tourists with us.
When we got back we booked ourselves a kayak trip down the Mekong river to see the buddha cave.
The next day we go up early and had a nice breakfast at a french(like) bakery around the corner from our tour place. We met up with our guide and found out we were the only people on the tour.
Our toure guide, Mohn, spoke english quite well and was very informative, telling us all about Laos and its people on the drive out to the river.
The trip down the river was a total blast. Its the dry season in Laos so the river level was low and what rapids here were, weren't very big. despite that, Niki and I almost dumped our Kayak once as we drifted sideways into two rocks in the first of the rapids. Disaster averted we continued on our way down to the buddha cave.
The Buddha Cave is an amazing site. In Laos, its forbidden to destroy old buddhe statues, or to take them out of the country. So for the most part all old Buddhas find their way to this site. After our solo trip down the river it was a little bit of a drag to be reminded that this was a tourist site. It may have housed thousands of Buddhas, but it also contained its fair share of tourists. Despite this we managed to get some great photos (all to be posted later, promise!). While we were in the caves, our guide Mohn was preparing a sweet picnic lunch for us.
We finished up, ate and hopped back into the kayaks to paddle down to a small riverside village where the local Laos Laos whiskey is made. We took a little wander around the village before packing up the kayaks and driving back to town.
Because we were short on time, we decided to catch a sleeper bus that night and head for a half day in Vientiane on our way to Si Pahn Don (4000 islands).

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