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Merry Christmas to all our family and friends, we thinking of you all over this festive season and wish everyone a happy new year. We spent Christmas in Luang Prabang which was really festive, seems like the place to be for families on holiday and travellers moving from North to South. We met up with Karin (our friend from Holland) for Christmas dinner and treated ourselves to a full spread, delicious. Father Christmas managed to find Josh half way across the world so he was really pleased and truly amazed at Father Christmas' ability to seek him out. On Christmas day we visited a nearby waterfall (Tad Sae falls), a really beatiful waterfall with different levels and pools to swim in, it was lovely. We also took a boat trip up the Mekong to visit some caves and stopped off at a village known for making Lao wiskey (from rice of course) and silk scarves. We also got up early on our last day to watch the monks receive elms (handfuls of sticky rice) a tradition in the morning at about 6:30am, where monks walk around their monastry block receiving elms from local women on the side of the street, a real peaceful reflection for the morning. From Luang Prabang we made our way up north to do some trekking in Luang Namtha province. We hoping to do a two day trek in the National park, spending the night in a tented camp in the jungle (with a guide) so should be fun, we've heard from others it's really worth it. If we don't have luck in the town of LUang Namtha with a booking we will make our way further north to Muang singh which is on the other side of the park and hopefully arrange a trek there, it seems like too many companies out there doing the same thing and not enough people for the business as they can only take a group of 8 at a time and only twice a week to encourage eco-tourism practice. However we've enjoyed walking around the surrounding villages and visited another waterfall by bicycle yesterday which took us through some hill tribes spinning cotton and making bamboo paper. After a few days we made our way back to Luang Nam tha and then to Huay Xai - boarder of Thailand. We crossed the Mekong the next day only 5 min boat ride through the old "Siam gate", from the "indochina gate", really interesting to see these old signs still up. We really enjoyed Laos and were a bit sad to leave.
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