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So after two days on the Mekong we happily arrived in very pretty Luang Prabang. We spent a little while looking for a guesthouse on the riverside road which was lined with many lush big trees and open-air cafes.
After quickly dumping our things we decided to head out to hunt for some food, (the boat trip is good but remember to bring some food as it makes you hungry). We walkd towards the main street in town, admirimg a few very trendy shops that would not have been out of place on brunswick st, when we heard the low hum of monks chanting. It was coming from a beautiful old temple, unfortunatly we wern't wearing pants so were unable to have a closer look. But the monks had made our first moments in Luang Prabang awesome.
We quickly found the main street (even though Luang Prabang is the secong lagest city in Laos it is no larger than Apollo Bay!) and were shocked by how beautiful it was. The buildings which lined the street were quite large and built in the french colonial style. They had great old wooden doors with tourquise paint flaking off. The actual shops were very stylish too, there were a few very modern and fancy wine bars. We walked to the end of the street and stumbled upon the beginning stages of the night market. After a quick walk we found this great stall set up along a little lane. It was an 'all you can eat' vegetarian place, one plate for 80cents. It was sooo good, lots of morning glory and eggplant but best of all it had a pasta dish!
I can't really remember what we did te next day, i know that it was the saint v essendon match and i couldn;t sit in the same room as Ty while we watched it! so i headed up to a bar with the laptop and watched the live updates and felt sorry for Nicky. When i ventured back to the room Ty was very nice and didn't say anything. Good man. For dinner that night we found an amazing burger vendor. We ate our burgers and drank very nice beerlao sitting on the bank of the other river in Luang Prabang watching the sun go down and trying to aviod the roosters near us as we thought they might attack us if we looked in ther eyes!
The next day we rented bikes. They were really cool, Ty's was a very slick silver and mine the exact same colour green as the pants i was wearing. We rode everywhere even up a major road that was one way. All the funny smiles and waves we were getting were not just saying 'hahah crazy tourists' they were saying 'um stupids this is a one way road and you are going the wrong way!' Meh we clued on eventually. We got baguettes for lunch and ate them overlooking the Mighty Mekong. We checked out a few temples and chatted with a few people hanging around the buddahs. We also watched a very bizzaar display of wild pigs being weighed. Before we realized that it was pigs being weighed we had heard and awful screaming for ages while we were riding around, then we came across two statuesque water buffalo tied to a tree. Then we heard the awful screaming again and as we rode past the pickup and the buffalo we saw three giant black oinkers. There were a few people who we thought must have been from a tribe near Luang Prabang and a guy who was obviusly looking to buy. They were tying the pigs ankles together and then dangling them from a big stick with a weight attached. The pigs were going off, wriggling and screaming. We had seen a lot of these pigs running around villages while we were on the boat and it was interesting to see what was done with them. We hoped they wouldn't soon be like the pigs we had seen when we rode through the produce market earlier that day.
The rest of our time in Luang Prabang was spent going to the Natioanl Museum (fair boring but the main room's walls were covered in a very intricate and colourful mirror mosaic depicting daily life in Laos) and buying snake wine and t-shirts at the Night Market and drinking fruit shakes.
Sadly we said good bye to pretty Luang Prabang and headed to gross Vang Vieng.
Write soon, Love Mim and Ty
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