Day 27 - You never know who you're going to bump into!!

After a night of listening to people have a loud conversation outside our hotel and a pair of cats having a fight it was breakfast next to the Mekong. Nice fruit, omelette and bread, all washed down with some banana and chocolate cake served to us!

We went for a wander around, visiting the many Wats that are located here and some were just amazing. The decoration is pretty impressive. We then visited a local market and also the ethnology centre to get some more gifts. Really nice hand made stuff so Alice had to buy a scarf!

We wandered back into town towards the bakery for a spot of lunch and on the way we stopped at a small shop selling hand made scarfs, blankets etc. Not up my street, I had a seat on the steps outside in the blistering heat. As I looked up I saw a chap that looked familiar and it was, the one and only Ben Fitzsimons who is having a year off work to travel the world. What are the chances, he could have been anywhere in the world but no, he was in a Luang Prabang bar with 2 Dutch girls :). A good chat with Ben and we agreed to meet up for a drink and a feed in the evening.

We grabbed a couple of pain ou chocolate for lunch, healthy! Then a bit more exploring including tackling the bamboo bridge across the Nam Khan river. The bridge is rebuilt every year as it gets washed away in the rainy season! We successfully made it across and went for a drink at Dyan Sabai which is a bar that is half built into the river bank and half on stilt platforms overlooking the river. We just had to have some sticky rice with dipping sauce aswell!!

We then decided to just laze outside the hotel overlooking the river. Alice went off to exchange Jane Eyre which she has eventually finished. On her return, we decided we were going to go and have another look at a throw we had seen the day before. $80 later and we were the proud owners of a hand made throw. It was from the Ock Pok Tok shop (try saying that over and over quickly!). These shops support remote villages by giving all the money to the village people who made the items, hence no haggling after my mistake the day before!

Then came the inevitable and I'm surprised it has taken 4 weeks for one of us to get ill. Alice came down with a sickness bug. We can't quite work out what it could have been as we didn't have meat for lunch so maybe it was the salad which apparently has been known to be washed in the Mekong. This meant that Alice didn't join Ben and I for dinner. Typical that it happens on the day we were meeting someone for dinner.

I met Ben and we wandered through the night market and through the 'food street' on route to a place by the river his Dutch friends had recommended. As we got closer we could see that no one was in there so we decided to go further along to a place with other people in! A nice cheap meal over a few beers, unfortunately Ben is on antibiotics so only one of us could enjoy the beer lao. Really good to hear what he'd been up to and all the countries he'd travelled through, amazing to think he is halfway through his year off. After dinner, Ben had arranged to meet a Swiss couple for a drink up on the main street. We wandered back up through the night market where I haggled a good price for the bag Alice looked at earlier (at least I thought it was!). Never send a man shopping, end of!

A really nice chat and drink up on the main street. We arrived at a bar that had just finished happy hour but we managed to convince them to extend the time! A quick drink there (happy hour here means half price) and onto another bar. We sat outside there for about 30 minutes and then the waiter asked if we wanted another drink. As we said no, he proceeded to close and lock the front of the bar around us and go off on his scooter. Can't say I've ever had that before!

Fairwells to Ben, then the Swiss couple and I walked back down to the river as they were staying near our place. A check on the patient and all is not well. Hopefully better in the morning with a bit of sleep. Was good that 3 premier league games were on as I got into bed, sweet, they show the Saturday 3pm kick offs. Hope the lads won today aswell.