At last, a lie in and leisurely breakfast. We decided to postpone the dawn alms procession of monks until tomorrow morning at 5:30. A very leisurely stroll around the streets of LP. It is a UNESCO world heritage site and, unlike some others, is not a disappointment. Apart from the many wats (temples) there are some 400 traditional Lao and French colonial era buildings, which have been well restored, most of which are now restaurants, galleries and guest houses wh...

As there are no direct flights from Phonsavanh to Luang Prabang and flying via Vientiane would involve stopping overnight we are travelling by road today. We alerted the staff at "Faulty Towers" that we would like breakfast at 7:00 and that we would appreciate fresh bread rolls (as they tried to fob us off the morning before by serving us stale cake-like Asian sliced bread until we spied another staff member ride up with fresh rolls which we then insisted on). We...

We survived the night in the "auberge" and set off on our tour of the enigmatic Plain of Jars which has a two-fold interest. The first and obvious interest is that the area has 60 odd locations scattered about on hillsides and hilltops with huge stone jars that have been quarried out of rock and left to puzzle tourists 2,000 years later. You can just imagine the instigator of the project having a chuckle and saying "in 2,000 years this is going to be a great tour...

A rare "normal" wake-up and a leisurely breakfast. The hotel in Vientiane is French run and very pleasant. Our flight is not until 1:40pm so we had time to walk around town a bit. Walked down to what was the Morning Market but it has been eclipsed by multi-storey malls on either side and looks ready to be demolished. All the silver and jewellery stalls have moved into the slick new buildings but still sell the same stuff they sold 20 years ago. The big difference...

Today we met T who we had known in Laos 20 years ago and spent most of the day just driving around town seeing what had and what hadn't changed. Good and bad changes and some things just don't change. Again, we heard the story about how the Chinese are investing so heavily in this country. A theme which we had heard earlier in both Myanmar and Vietnam. They come bearing gifts and build some grand edifices which are more or less "presents". Of course, there is a p...