Lotus Villa Laos Luang Prabang

The following day pretty much followed the same pattern as the last. Get on the boat, watch the world go by. We did notice one slightly strange feature of the river. As we are in the rainy season at the moment the river was high, brown with silt and full of logs and detritus. Oddly, the one item that kept showing up more often than anything else foreign was footwear?!? Jandles and sandles in a range of colours just floating passed with remarkable regularity. Honestly, we must have spotted 3 o...

Luang Prabang (I don't have the guidebook with me so I might be making a bit of the following up): the glittering jewel of the Mekong, home to 20,000 (and two for a few days), place of a thousand Wats (actually it's around 200, but to he honest that doesn't sound as good and when you consider how small a town it is and how impressive the Wats are - especially when you see how little the people have - I'm happy to round it up for them), the ancient seat of the rulers of Laos (neither Rats or I...

Hello team, Just a quick update to let you know that photos will be following shortly. Laos is a great country, but the internet is a little bit slow and we have been having a bit of trouble with the photos. Hopefully things will get better when we get to Vietnam and you will be able to see our smiling mugs soon. Catch ya

20 Jan (Continued). Our friendly Buddhist monk was called Shong and he was a monk at Wat Nong Temple. Monks do not need to be a monk all their lives and many go to a Temple and become a novice-monk just so that they can get a good education. This is what Shong did and he had his schooling and college as a monk and had then stayed on for another 3 years or so. From Shong we learned a bit about what is like. People can become monks at any stage in their life and stay for any length of time thou...

After landing on the small airstrip we caught a motorised tuk-tuk to Lotus Villa, Luang Prabang, a UN Heritage town. We went for a walk along the nearby Mekong and were disappointed at the number of tourists. Tourists apart, the place and people are charming. The food was exceptional and the whole atmosphere welcoming and friendly. The hundreds of monks living in the many Temples in Luang Prabang added to the overall good feeling the place has. There are about 800 monks living in approx 47 Te...

22 Jan - Again up early, actually it is hard to have a lie in as so many cockerals are crowing from 0500 onwards. After breakfast we again did a short meditation in the Temple with Shong and then we hired mountain bikes for the 30 km cycle to Kuang Si Waterfalls. These are bigger than the Tad Sae falls we cycled to a few days ago and are on everyone's must-see list in Luang Prabang, but most folk take a minivan or tuk-tuk. The road was largely quiet and we passed through many small villages. ...

18th June 2008 Check-out : K&K Bungalow; Check-in : Lotus Villa Argi got up early and went for his run today while Lazy Me slept in till it was time for breakfast. Had a hearty breakfast before bidding our sad farewell to K&K. We have decided to stay a night in a hotel in town because we have to be at the pier very early the following day for our 2-day boat trip on the Mekong River to Chiang Khong in Thailand. We had researched through the Agoda website for a nice hotel in the town ar...