Land of the Elephants

---

Before reaching the land of elephants (laos) we had to take a 27 hour bus journey to luang prabang - we had booked a sleeper bus so we thought it must be ok as we have beds and would be able to sleep....but as always you get what you pay for!

The bus was made up of 40 beds three rows of bunks all the width of a seat - we were on the top in the middle and the bus was full!!!
We all tried to make ourselves as comfortable as possible, some got a little too comfortable - yes we've almost seen it all on this trip and its only been a month!!! People were smoking, drinking throwing their chicken bones peanut shells all over the bus...they really made themselves at home...as usual we were the only tourists on the bus but luckily the films they showed were in engrish with mandarin subtitles - the movies were definately the hightlight for us it was your usual action packed pretty chinese girls doing martial art assasinating people with cheesy cop trying to save the day and pizza delivery boy trying to make a better life for himself by street car racing.

We had to stop several times for food, cigarette and bathroom breaks in little places in the middle of nowhere so didnt get to sleep much if at all mainly because of the 3 crazy drivers and the windy bumpy roads we spent most of the journey trying not to fall out of our beds!!

We were so happy to finally get off the bus even if they did drop us of at night in the middle of nowhere with no money and no clue where our guesthouse was, but luckily a local tuk tuk driver was waiting for us to take us to an atm and our guesthouse - we are staying in a locals house by the mekong river - bargain and only 2 pounds a night and free bananas for breakfast, ok so I had to wait to use the bathroom because a cockroach in the toilet but at that price you cant really complain...

Luang Prabang is a pleasant change from where we have been for the past 3 weeks, firstly its too hot do anything and there is one main strip of restaurants, bars, cafes, stalls and a night market it really is a sleepy little riverside town its also a world heritage sites which means you cannot smoke here and everything closed down around 11pm so not much of a party place but nice place to chill eat good food (we finally found an indian restaurant ) and pamper yourself in all the herbals spas...we of course have already visited one for a much needed facial after 2 days here we already look and feel better - tanned with clean skin.

We spent our last day at the whisky villiage, visiting buddas in caves/temples/hills/pagodas(you get the drift) and swiming in the rain at the waterfalls. Unlike everyone else, we decided to skip Vangvieng (famous for its drinking and tubing, in that order) and headed south, 24 hours away by bus again, towards the Four Thousand Islands, Si Phan Don on the Mekong River for some r&r.

---