Laos - South to Luang Prabang - Day 198 (17,638 miles)

At the bike wash Laos style.


Cute kids.


On the day we travelled to Luang Prabang we met Angela and Antje, Berliners touring northern Laos on hired motorcycles. They told us about a great guesthouse in Luang Prabang, a good price with the all important off road parking for the bike. If you are ever there it’s called the Jaliya Guesthouse and costs around £6.50 a night. We met up with Angela and Antje later that day and had a great dinner and very enjoyable evening. They were great company, we should have taken a better photo than this!


Nice kids who were interested in the bike when we stopped in their village.




Luang Prabang is an incredibly pretty UNESCO World Heritage town, it is a peninsular surrounded by the Mekong river on one side and the Khan river on the other. It has some lovely buildings from it’s French colonial days and some interesting temples. I don’t want to quote statistics because I will get it wrong but it has been rated as one of the top city destinations in the world in recent years which is quite amazing considering the location of Laos. It is a lovely little city and you can get really nice boutique hotel accommodation on the banks of the Mekong for prices that are really reasonable compared to most other desirable cities in the world. However, in our view getting out and seeing rural Laos is a lot more interesting.


Unfortunately John had a tummy bug for a couple of days, luckily it was while we were in Luang Prabang so at least he had a nice room with a decent bathroom and there was plenty for me to do while he didn’t feel up to sightseeing or riding.


Each day at 6.00am the Tak Bat takes place, this is a time when anyone (but usually the local Buddhists) make offerings to the monks from the local temples. It has become a bit of a tourist attraction although due to the early start I suppose there were only about a hundred tourists spread along a street watching and photographing the offering. To be honest I and others I spoke to afterwards felt a bit awkward, it’s a spiritual act but some tourists virtually chase the monks along the street trying to get good photos! Still, hypocritical of me to criticise and I did take a couple of photos from a distance.


On a hill above the town in the Tham Phou Si temple, I got chatting to 2 Laos ladies who were visiting to collect a young relative who is training to be a novice monk. They took me to a part of the temple where the novices where being given what must be the equivalent of a school end of year assembly before spending sometime with their families.


Not a bad spot for a game of volleyball.


I did a one day Laos cookery course, great fun that started with a visit to the market to buy ingredients.


Unfortunately creatures such as small birds, snakes and rats are delicacies. Luckily we weren’t using any in our recipes that day.


Banana flowers, we did use these but I may struggle to get them from Sainsbury’s back home.




Coagulated pigs blood another yummy ingredient I was glad we did not use!




With John feeling better we had a cultural day and visited the National Museum during the day and the Royal Ballet Theatre in the evening. The dancing was traditional Laos and it was a bit hard to follow the story but kind of went along the lines of…….

Baddie wants to marry princess
She says no
He puts all her servants to sleep
Good guy comes and wakes them up
He kills the baddie
And marries the princess

Lets just say we were glad it only lasted an hour!




At Kouang Si there is a charity that rescues Asiatic bear cubs that have been orphaned when their mothers have been taken for the supply of bear bile to the Chinese medicine market. The charity are working to educate the population to report poachers and to boycott the use of bear bile as a medicine.

The beautiful but very cold Kouang Si waterfalls, we left it to the young backpackers to get the jumping in the water shots.

Bye for now.