Well its been a few days since i last wrote. and what a couple of days it has been! we are officially loving Laos!

On our way back to the hotel after i was last writing we passed a big party at a house where there was a marquee and loads of people dancing around and throwing water at each other. When we got back we bumped into a few of the others and they had been to the party and were covered in water and the locals had put black stuff on their faces (not sure why, this is just something they do!) anyway they were going to get some beers for the hosts and head back so we decided to join them. so we went to this house but the party had died down and they were just sat chilling out so we gave them some of the beers and joined them. it was so great just hanging out with a local family. when darren arrived it was great because he could chat to them in thai because it is so similar to lao. we all had a really nice afternoon chatting and playing with the puppies and kids, it was such a great thing to do, a real highlight of the trip.

we had a pretty early night after this as i had a ginormous headache (it was de-hydration, honestley, nothing to do with the beer and shots of rice wine) as we had to be up early the next morning for kayaking! the next day we had a short drive to the river and then headed off in our kayaks. it was 2 to a kayak so darren took the back for steering and i paddled at the front. it was pretty tough going, much harded than we'd expected! but really really amazing. a great way to see the scenery and every bend in the river had a different beautiful view. there were kids playing in the river and little boys snorkling and fishing. we rowed for about an hour and got to a little village on the bank. here we stopped off and had a look round where the Hmong(?) people live. it was really amzing to see. there were around 160 people living in the village in 27 huts, most of them on stilts, and all made out of bamboo. the women all wore the same traditional dress and the ones who were old enough for marriage shaved their eyebrows off. there were pigs and piglets everywhere - very cute. also all the children were the cutest kids i've ever seen all really smiley and excited to say 'hello' to us! when we went back to our kayaks they were all swimming and bathing in the river it was so cute! after this we kayaked for another hour or so and then stopped for a picnic which was loads of different dished served to us on 3 large banana leaves and was the best picnic i've ever had, it was so cool! i had a swim in the river in my life jacket which was pretty funny, i felt like a cork! then i got freaked out about water snakes and got out. next we kayaked to another village with even cuter kids and amazing views of the surrounding forests and hills. we stopped here for a short while and then reluctentley got back in our kayaks. we were really pooped by this time! our last stretch of kayaking was really hard work, with quite a few rapids on the way. we were doing quite well going down the rapids managing not to get stuck on rocks and then i heard darren shouting 'arghhh!" and i thought oh we must have gone over a hard one or something and i turned around and he had fallen out on the rapids!!! by this time i was about 20 metres away and failed at trying to stop the kayak and ended up floating away. at first i thought he was messing around and i was laughing because of the way he was rolling around and then i realised it was serious and freaked out. poor darren was getting thrown all over the rocks and couldnt stop because of the force of the water! he couldnt get his footing and everytime he did he slipped off, and then to make it worse, another kayak crashed into him. eventually he got out of the rapids and the tour guides helped him back into the kayak and checked he wasnt too badly injured! thank goodness it was just a few bumps and scratches! after getting over the shock and making a joke out of it we finished off our journey with a real sense of achievement, and so we should, we had just kayaked for 12 miles!!! we realised how far it was on the journey back in the bus, which took us along the riverside. after this we were really knackered so had a shower and went for a nice meal together, getting drunk on 3 beers between us because of how tired we were!

the next day was a day of travelling, a 8 hour drive to Luang Prabang. it was an amazing drive with beautiful views all the way off hills and forests and loads of villages with smiling waving cute kids! 8 hours is a long drive though and we were glad to get out at the end! we had a mooch into the town centre and went for a meal with the group and then had a quick look at the night market but it was closing so we didnt see much, instead we are going back tonight. i did get a purse for about 30p though!!!

today has been an amazing day so far. last night we booked ourself on an elephant treck. we got up early this morning and had about an hour drive the the place, all the time it getting more and more rural which was great! when we arrived, we had to get a longtail boat across the river to get there (which was terrifying, it felt like it was going to capsize whenever anyone moved!) we had a short climb to the camp where the elephants were kept and then got on our elephant with our mahoot (elephant trainer) we were both on the same elephant and it was really cool just plodding through the forest. then we went down this massive muddy hill which was pretty scary but the elephants managed not to fall (better than i would have) we got to this river and the mahoot swapped places with me, so i got to sit on the elephants neck, it was so cool!! the mahoot and darren sat on the back and chatted away in thai while i steered the elephant and swatted the flies off her face! it was awesome. the scenery around us was so beautiful too. after the trek we had a short talk about elephants and then a meal at a little wooden restuarant on the hillside with amazing views of the river.

this afternoon we have explored luang prabrang a bit and it is such a beautiful city. it used to be the capital of laos until 1975 and vientienne is the capital. luang prabrang used to be a french colony and it is a unesco world heritage city and is really pretty. there are loads of ornate buddhist wats near the river like the one in this picture. we just had a drink on mekong river and after this we are climbing a hill to look at a temple and watch the sun set. should be lovely!

i have added the last few photos of china, but its so slow that i will put others up another time. unfortunately we didnt take our camera kayaking because we didnt want to get it wet but hopefully we can nick a few pics off people who tooks theirs!