View from the boat near Luang Prabang

The boat leaves at 9am this morning as promised and the journey continues pretty much as yesterday.  In the early afternoon some locals get on and start ordering beer.  They’re sitting with an Italian guy up front and are offering beer to everyone who comes their way.  The Italian guy and a German girl we’ve been talking to go for it and are pretty sozzled by the time the ring leader gets off the boat a couple of hours later.  His mate stays on and they continue with the drinking … its all quite funny and keeps the rest of us amused.  We arrive at the port, about 10km out of Luang Prabang, at about 5pm.  The scenery has been pretty green and lush all the way along the river but gets more rocky and picturesque as we get closer to our destination.

We take a tuk tuk into town with a few people we’ve been talking to on the boat.  We are dropped off just by the night market and begin to look for hotels.  Its quite a job.  They are either really expensive, like 50-100 USD plus or full.  Our usual budget is about 15 USD maximum (about £10 or 125,000 Laos Kip). We’ve heard that Chinese New Year, which is in a day or two, may be an influence and could be why its so busy.  We try a few places with the others then decide to try on our own.  Its quite a walk with the packs but eventually we find somewhere, a bit out of town, which is 100,000 Kip a night.  Its a nice, clean, big room with a bathroom and hot shower which is more than we’ve had in a lot of places so its a result at that price.  No wifi but we’ll live without for a day or two.

We walk into town to find some food and its only just over 10 mins so not too far at all.  Its a pretty looking place although its soooooo touristy its not true.  There is a huge night market selling clothes, bags, sarongs, jewellery and anything else you might wish to purchase.  We get away from the shopping frenzy as quickly as possible and go down to the Mekong to find a place for dinner.  We eat a lovely meal, have a wander then go back to the hotel.  

We’ll have to find some wifi to break the big news to the families tomorrow.