Phousi Hotel Luang Prabang

Claire, the Irish girl that I met on the way home from our trek in Chiang Mai and then connected with again in Vang Vieng, and I arrived in Luang Prabang in the early evening on October 28th. Claire had left her debit card in an ATM back in Thailand and had arranged to have a new one sent to a hotel she had picked out of her Lonely Plant travel guide, so we headed straight there. Luckily, her card was waiting for her! We decided to share a room in order to save money, and after checking in ...

... went to a bar called Lao Lao garden. Here we got a table and ordered some cocktails. We were also provided with free shots of lao lao whisky. I shunned mine, then fifteen minutes later as we were all chatting, spotted an eager slug making a beeline straight for it. He crawled across the table then caressed the circumference of the shot glass with his slimy body. I took this to mean he was up for a drink, so I poured some of the red liquid next to his head. Mr Slug then shrunk ...

... from that one time. <br> That evening, hey why the heck not, I had another 4 euro massage. This one was another disappointment, again a young girl who wasn't into her job and used too much force. I felt I must have bruises afterwards. I kept telling her to use less force but she kept forgetting, she was very distracted and kept talking to colleagues. She got no tip. <br><br> 25th October - early start to see the monks<br><br>Today I got ...

... is spectacular - the best yet I'd say and we ate our faces off! We went around more stupas (burial or commemorative stone) and temples and unfortunately lost one camera and broke another loosing all those pictures. So images of Vientiane has been committed to memory for the rest of our lives.<br><br>Savannahket was next and was the highlight. Here we got closer to the real Laos. This was a very small, very poor town with the best ...

... this to the guy we hired bikes from before and he eventually accepted. He begged us to bring back the bikes, as he explained a tourist before gave him an ID card instead of a passport and then disappeared with his bike! We promised and set off on our trip.<br>The waterfalls were 28km away so we took mountain bikes and set off. The route was beautiful, with mountains in the distance we cycled past villages, school, temples. The route seemed a little steeper than we ...

... to a Siamese lineage. It was mandatory for the original breeds of Siamese to have kinked tails in ord** for them to be consid**ed a true Siamese.<br><br><br> <br><br> <br><br> <br><br><br>A Siamese legend tells the tale of once upon a time, th**e was a Siamese Princess who was frightened of losing h** rings while she bathed in a stream. Looking around for somewh**e convenient to place h** jewell**y, she noticed that h** favourite cat had crooked ...

... decided to hang around again for an extra day to try and get better. Didn't really help much which made us rethink our whole South East Asia and India travel plans.<br><br>In the end we decided it was best if we just got to somewhere with Western hygiene standards. Mark changed all our flights and we flew out the next day to Chiang Mai (skipping Vang Vieng and Vientiene in Laos). We will also be skipping India and going straight to England.<br>

Luang Prabang is nestled in a valley of a densely vegetated mountian range (which subsequently meant our bus ride from Vientiane took all day). The town itself is a Unesco heritage site; home to countless Buddhist monuments and working temples. Amazingly it isn't the truely beautiful temples, in their varied styles (be that ceramic murals that glint witht he sunlight, or the great golden statues, or ornate wooden carvings), or the fact that ...

... was by no means uncommon in the wats of Luang Prabang, where monks rub shoulders with tourists, but it was probably the worst we saw.<br><br>In another incident, beside Thaat Chomsi on top of a large hill in the middle of the city reached by numerous stone steps, a multitude of tourists, ourselves included, gathered to take pictures of the sun as it set over the mountains. Three of us had arrived early to set up our cameras on tripods and we were the only ones there apart from a ...