Laos

My journey in Laos started with 2 days travelling down the Mekong River on the Slow Boat. The river winds through hills covered with lush greenery; sometimes farmers’ fields and rice paddies, sometimes a wildness of trees and plants. It was amazing to see such beautiful scenery all around. Occasionally there were tiny villages of bamboo huts and people travelling across the river in long boats. We spent 7 hours on the river on the first day before we got to the overnight stop at Pakbang. There was another 8 hours on Monday, the beautiful scenery exactly the same as the day before. I’m really glad I took the slow boat though I was also really glad when we finally arrived at Luang Prabang.

View of the Mekong from the Slow Boat

I’ve been in Luang Prabang for 5 days now, and I really like it here. The first day we hired some bikes and cycled around the city. I say city, it’s more like a good sized town. We visited some temples and cycled over the old bridge to the other side of the Nam Khan River, there we found a hidden away bar with views over the river. We climbed the Phou Si hill at the centre of the town in the evening to watch the sunset, unfortunately it started raining just as the sun was going down! Still the views from the top were amazing.

View of Luang Prabang, across the Nam Khan river towards the airport

We went to the Khong Si waterfall on Wednesday to go swimming in the river, however, it started raining again as we arrived which made it too cold to go in. The rain made the waterfall very impressive though!

Me in the rain at Khong Si Waterfall

There is an awesome night market in the town with hundreds of stalls and so many different handmade Laos items. Also a night food market nearby where you can buy really good food cheaply, my favourite so far is the Luang Prabang sausage! I’ve also looked around a big local market which had everything you can imagine in, and tasted different varieties of local tea.

Local Lao market

I plan to go kayaking down the river to the Tad Sae waterfall soon then I think we will move on via the Plain of Jars to Vang Vieng.