The core of mans' spirit comes from new experiences.: Into Laos (Luang Prabang)

Well, Christina is pumped, we reached another country and she gets to sew a new patch on her pack! Yeahhh. And I’m pumped because we finally became multi-millionaires today!!!! Yep that’s right, simply exchange a few hundred US dollars into Lao Kip and you too will be a million-kip-onaire.
Exchange rate $1 = $8,000 kip.

Laos so far has turned out with mixed emotions for us, unfortunately we both got sick after our first night in Luang Prabang, likely due to dinner in the street market we suspect.
Upon arriving that night, we headed down a very very busy alley with all types of food vendors and tourists eating huge plates of food. Turns out you could basically go buffet style, choose from all types of tubs of rice, noodles, veggies, etc. and then hand the plate to the lady and she’d stir fry it up for you right there (cost $10,000 kip, about $1.20). We could both easily eat off this enormous dish. Well, the next day Christina says she’s not feeling well but she toughs it out and we do a bit of exploring up to the temple hill overlooking the town (great view, impressive). After that, she’s feeling a bit worse so we head back to our guest house to chill out. We made the bad decision of not getting an air conditioned room this time since it had been cold at nights lately (bad mistake), the days were smouldering hot and uncomfortable in the room to say the least. Christina got sick and threw up and had the poo poos also. Not good. The next day she’s not feeling much better and then I start getting ill also. We both tough it out one more day in our non-air-con room thinking it will pass soon and start taking some medicine we brought for just this case. One day later, Christina is a bit better and I can’t stand the heat, so we move guesthouses, still ill. Thank God for Oudom Souk Guesthouse, the little place was right around the corner, much much better, cleaner, nicer, had air/con, private bath, hot shower, and lucky lucky English HBO on the tele (our savior). We spent 2 more days here recovering, trying to get a bit of food in us and getting over stomach cramping and sucking all the air/con down we could and watching a ton of bad but English HBO movies. Ugghhhhhhh!

So after about 5 days, we’ve basically spent in Luang Prabang, we got to see the night market and trek up a hill/temple (That Phu Si & Wat Tham Phu Si) and that’s about it. We were anxious to get back on our feet and get moving. Luckily symptoms passed and by day 6 we felt better to try it out.

We rented a moped and off we rode to check out the nearby famous waterfall-Kuang Si. There was also a bear reserve there. Glad we did that, by far the best waterfall I’ve seen in my life to this point. Beautiful clear topaz water, chilly but not ice cold and pool after pool of areas you could explore and swim in while working your way towards the “Fall” itself. We probably spent 4 hours here exploring and I did a few small cliff jumps and swung off a great rope swing into the water they had rigged up. We got some wonderful pics of this place and really had an enjoyable day finally. The moped ride out through the hill country to get there was awesome as well. AND nobody got sick!!!! Yeahhhhhh.

We grabbed a fun authentic Indian meal that night and explored Luang Prabang on the scooter more but not really finding too many more highlights outside of the impressive night market. Went ahead and booked VIP bus tickets for our 10 hour bus ride the next day to Vientienne, Laos (the capital city).

So LPrabang was worth seeing, I’d recommend, particularly the waterfall, and the temple/hill, and the beautiful night market. I don’t suspect we’d stay 7 days again though, it’s more of a 2-3 day town, but unfortunately we wasted 5 laid up in the room recovering, but oh well, guess that’s part of the travel deal sometimes. Maybe wouldn’t recommend the $1.20 enormous plate of food in the alley either 

OK- we’re off to the capital, Vientienne, hoping for better luck!