Our Great Adventure: Luang Prabang Day 74 1/12/2014

Gosh it's hard to believe it's December already. Time has in the main become irrelevant unless we're travelling like today (or it's Monday and we rejoice in not having to get up for work!). Today we're heading north to Luang Prabang. We've booked a VIP minibus for the 8 hour journey. Thought we might need a little bit of luxury. We were joined on the journey by Rae and Bill, a Kiwi couple who live in Melbourne and have travelled a lot around South East Asia using Bangkok as a base. We arrived in Luang Prabang after 4 hours, surprisingly quicker than what we expected which we later found out was because we'd come on the new road which climbs c1,900 over a high pass. Most vehicles still use the old road which adds 4 hours and c150km to the journey. The pass certainly was impressive. We shared a tuk tuk into the centre of Luang Prabang with Rae and Bill and another English couple. We were staying at the Apple Guesthouse and were warmly greeted by it's owners, a young Laos couple who spoke excellent English. After dropping off our bags and getting some tips from the Australian mother in law we headed down to the front to get lunch overlooking the Mekong. This must be the 5th time we've seen the river on our travels north. We then had a walk around the Old Quarter which is on the peninsula and bound by the Mekong and Nam Khan Rivers. It's very attractive and we did to feel that Lao has started to redeem itself. The peninsular is Unesco protected and includes 33 Buddhist temples. We headed to the main one, Wat Xieng Thong, and after paying our entrance fee plus extra 5000 kip for a sarong to cover Diane's legs, we looked around in glorious afternoon sunshine. The temple is quite different to others we've seen on our travels. Glass mosiacs cover the walls and the rear wall features an impressive tree of life. Inside the temple is richly decorated with wooden colums supporting the ceiling. From here we headed down the main street, there are basically three tree lined streets running parallel along the peninsular. We spotted a nice looking bistro and decided to drop in for a cold Beer Lao. In the evening we treated ourselves to dinner at a French/Lao restaurant (we thought we deserved it after the food we'd had in Vang Vieng) and both had lovely meals. We headed back to the Apple Guesthouse for an early night and looking forward to the trip we've booked for tomorrow - a visit to the local waterfalls and trip down to the Mekong to see a local cave.