Towards Luang Prabang

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After getting stuck for one day in Udomxay, which wasn't half that bad as the lonely planet makes it out to be, we continued to Nong Khiaw. We were originally planning to stay here for a couple of days but on the advise of 2 Laotians we jumped on the boat to Muang Ngoi Neua which is located 1 hour upriver from Nong Khiaw. This one hour trip is about as scenic and beautiful as it gets.

Still somewhat dazed by the magnificent surroundings we arrived at our destination and checked in at our guest house. The rest of our day was spend suspend in a hammock taking in the surroundings.

Next day we embarked on possibly our last jungle trek of our journey. Although not as spectacular and hard as the one we did in Nam Ha NPA, it was quite nice in the end.The trek included walking through some rice fields, some villages, a bit of jungle and ended at a beautiful waterfall. This waterfall has been the most beautiful we've seen so far (and we've seen a lot) and this coupled with a small cultural dip in the villages made this trek a very satisfactory experience.

As already stated, the surroundings were beautiful. So we decided to get the most of it by exploring and relaxing in and around town. The next day we headed back to Nong Khiaw but sadly our boat ride back was a bit ruined by the bad weather. This also made us decided against continuing on the luang prabang by boat that same day. Since we arrived early in Nong Khiaw we still managed to do some sightseeing. Highlight was the visit to a large cave used as bomb shelter during the secret war before moving on to Luang Prabang the next day. For this we used the bus opposed to the boat, as it was cheaper and we were running out of cash. After a four hour bus ride we arrived in Luang Prabang.

Luang Prabang is Laos its cultural capital and world heritage site. Its main attractions are clustered around the old time, this is also the place with most guest houses, shops and restaurants. Of course this also means tourists but we were surprised at the amount of them. At this point we were glad at visiting Nam Tha first, which is still largely unspoiled. Still, we intensely enjoyed Luang Prabang as it is a beautiful city large enough to lose most of the tourist crowd by venturing a little bit of the beaten track.

Besides enjoying the city, the main activity we conducted these days was a bicycle ride through the surroundings. This was nice and slightly unpractical as we had rented 2 bikes with no gears. As a result we had a hard time managing all the climbs on our road and frequently resorted to walking. This only made the trip more fun and we enjoyed it quite a bit.

The last day in Luang Prabang started quite early again as our bus left around 7 in the morning. This bus would take us in 8 hours to Vang Vieng. Here we planned to do some climbing and tubing before moving on to Vientiane and finally Bangkok again.

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