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After many games of 'guess the time we'll arrive in Luang Prabang' we did eventually arrive to the most beautiful sunset over the most beautiful town. The Lonely Planet was way off the mark with it's room rates - in fact we spoke to one chap who had been here 4 weeks ago and was shocked at how much the prices had increased!
Luang Prabang is bordered on both sides by rivers - the Mekong and the Nam Khan - and it's so picturesque! It has quaint buildings from its period of French rule, tons of wats and hence tons of monks, great night markets and really cosmopolitan bars and restaurants! We found a great coffee house called JoMa which we just loved (so much so that we actually had a loyalty card!!!). Whilst there our gang also went out of town to a bear sanctuary and a waterfall which to our horror involved much uphill climbing and downhill sliding. Have to say we did feel a little cheated when we got to the top, we'd expended all this energy thinking we were going to see the waterfall of waterfalls when in fact what we saw was a pool of water which was the source of the waterfall we had just seen down below!!!! The bears were quite amusing - they are all rescued bears. Bear farming is quite big in SE Asia as bear bile is used in chinese medicine. They confine the bears to tiny cages and then extract the bile through a catheter or open wound in their abdomen - the pictures were really disturbing!
Luang Prabang is quite funny as it has an 11.30 - 12pm curfew but if you want to stay up later then you go to the bowling alley. When you leave a restaurant or bar 5+ tuk tuk drivers will be on to you asking you if you want to go bowling so on day 2 we decided to go for it. Have to say we had the best time - see pictures for New Zealand Ben sliding down the alley and then following it up with a break dance. David won the tournament but to be quite frank we were all a bit too merry to take it seriously.
We had a bit of excitement one of the nights when a mad woman on a motor bike came careering down through the market stalls which, I hasten to add, is a pedestrian area. I'd just finished taking the guys photo when she emerged from the stalls recklessly driving over all the stall holders goods eventually crashing into another motor bike. She then tried to set off again at which point David was screaming at me to stop looking at her and get in a shop out of her way. There was a sudden mad dash as people tried to get to safety as they realised she was going for more but fortunately some Thai guys pounced on her. We all went to bed after that - far too much excitement for one night!
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