sabqi dji Luang Prabang

After a messy immigration crossing, sorting out Laos visas, (you don't really know who to trust)  we are now travelling on two day slowboat voyage up a river to Luang Prabang. the luggage is stored below the narrow deck but when that is full it gets chucked on the roof and we saw a few close calls where the rucksacks almost fell overboard as they changed hands. The interior of the boat basically consists of old car seats bolted together in rows, the good thing about this is that you can slide them about the deck for more legroom, throughout the trip we were treated to dense unspoiled forest on either side of the river. occasionally you would see a small village where the children would run to the bank to greet our passing boat. Locals would also hop on and off the roof with ducks and rice supplies. After a while we ended up spinning our chairs around to play cards with the girls till our overnight stop. Feeling fairly travel weary we were bombarded with locals wanting you to come to their guesthouse. Eventually we found a decent price and the four of us traveled on the back of a pickup truck to a simple but nice house. The landlady offered us  some whiskey. It was out of a water bottle, I had the first swig because I assumed it would be ok, (it wasn't eating through plastic bottle) this was our first taste of lao lao, a local "whiskey" made from fermented rice. with fire in my belly I went in search of food, we found a place that had on the sign; "lovely jubbly" and "my wife makes good food!" sounded good, tasted good too. when it came to pay the money isn't the easiest to work with; (a can of coke cost 6,000kip) so you end up getting confused with all the zeros.

After another full day on our vessel we arrived in Luang Prabang, feeling sleepy we hoisted up our backpacks hoped onto dry land and scrambled up rocks to our first signs of a real town for 2 days, the sun was setting casting the world in dark crimson, thus we set about the exciting backpacker ritual of going from street to street trying to find a place to sleep whilst having all your possessions on your back. After we finally settled on a decent guesthouse with free tea! we began another hunt for nourishment, for the last two days we had been living off packets of perculier flavored crisps like hot and spicy crab and seaweed so I would happily settle for anything. We tasted Lao Beer that was very good when compared to the Chaing.We had a look through the nightmarket and inwhich tish managed to submerge her foot in someones excrement, very funny. We also introduced the girls to a new game I started in Bangkok where you sing to any pesky tok tok driver, so we sang a few renditions of 'wonderwall', 'like a virgin' and 'brighteyes', you get two reactions; bemusement which quickly turns to laughing, or just straight out shock, either way they to stop bothering you. At 11 there is a curfew so according to lonely planet the only place where you can still go and have a drink was the bowling ally, which when we were dropped off there was dead apart from a couple of locals 2 welshmen, Ben and Johnny who could really drink, and a frenchman, they arrived on the sameday as us by speedboat, the frenchman had grizzly face that had sucumbe to the suns gaze. we played a few drinking games of "arrogance" and "tipit" coin games that kept the barman very happy. We even tried to sneak in a few free bowling games, but you can only be so subtle with this and were soon told off. and a few hours and many unreasonable sized shots of lao lao later the bowling ally was full, I guess everywhere else had now closed. We took took'd it back to the hostel and crashed out.

The next day didn't really get started until the evening, we had to sleep off the lao lao and organise trips and buses in town, this involves shopping around and can take your whole day up. We did however climb up a lot of steps to a temple with a awesome view. In the evening we made our own Lao dishes on a fire and found this cool bar; Utopia, its full to the rafters with backpackers but has a really relaxed atmosphere,  we met up with the welsh lads and some Swedish guys, (one look just like Hanson, backwards cap and everything!) when Utopia closed the owner was kind enough to give us few who were lingering free absinthe shots to send us on our way, the took took dropped us at a local club that to be honest was rubbish so we left for our favorite watering hole, the bowling alley!

This morning we rented 4 speed scooters to find a waterfall, the bikes were heaps of rusty junk so we took it very easy especially when we had to drive over small bridges that were nothing more than lose planks of wood. The waterfall was worth it though, you can scrabble right to the top and waid across. lower down there are smaller falls and a rope swing! I think we stayed there until the girls where well and truly bored. The night ride back was full of flies but we got back ok, then onto Utopia and bowling, there is a pattern emerging here.