Lazy in Luang Prabang

We've been in Luang Prabang for 3 days now and a gentle lethargy has set in! It is such a chilled out place. We had a 'temple day' today where we visited 5 different temples, all of which were very beautiful. They are not as well preserved as the ones in Thailand which I guess is down to Laos having a lot less money, but they are still very ornate and decorative with gold leaf everywhere and beautiful mosaics and carvings.

Moped riding in Luang Prabang

We have booked a trip tomorrow to see the Pak Ou caves which you get to by boat back down the Mekong. This involves a fairly early start so we are going to combine it with getting up even earlier to see the daily alms giving ritual where the local people donate food and supplies to the buddhist monks as they parade through the streets between 6 and 7am.

One of the cafes on the mainh street

Then on Sunday we are planning to visit some nearby waterfalls where we can swim and relax and in the evening one of the resorts just outside LP is having a bonfire night with fireworks (we're not sure if they realise what they are celebrating or whether it is just a good opportunity to make money from the English tourists!).

We have scoped out the town now and have found the cheap places to eat - one particular lunch place appears to be someones front room opened up with a few tables and chairs and a permanent pot of noodle soup on the go - so for lunch we have 2 noodle soups with pork and 2 soft drinks and it costs us around 90p!

View over the Nam Khong River

We have met some interesting characters including a taxi driver last night who asked us if needed a tuk tuk - we said no as we were cycling then he offered us some opium instead! Not sure if this was supposed to aid our cycling but needless to say we declined that too!

Every morning it is grey and overcast here (although still around 21 degrees) and by 11am it has burnt off to be glorious sunshine with not a cloud in the sky and a temp reaching 30 odd and very direct sunshine - I guess we are higher up here and with less pollution so the sun hits stronger. We are both looking pretty brown even though we haven't been actively trying to get a tan. The evenings get a bit chillier down to about 18 degrees, sometimes we need a long sleeved shirt but certainly not cold.

The people are very friendly here and seem to laugh a lot which is nice (hopefully its not at us and our attempts to speak Laotian!) We have some good photos of 4 people on a moped so will try and add them in at some point.

Although the main currency is kip (around 18000 to 1 quid) they like to be paid in dollars and or Thai baht so we are carrying 3 different currencies around and trying to get our heads around 4 different exchange rates all the time! It doesn't help that sometimes like at breakfast this morning we paid the bill in Thai baht then they gave us a mixture of baht and dollars back! Luckily they do seem to be very honest and haven't ripped us off yet but it does get confusing!

Sorry if this has been a waffling blog but although we haven't done much we have lots of stuff to tell you all.

Anyway - love to you all and will post again after the weekend.