Back to the road after a great time in luang nam tra , but this time for 9 hours going up and down in the mountains through proper jungle, never seen anything like it ! Occasionally you will see another truck but maybe one every hour, and go past little hill tribes , and areas of jungle cut down for agriculture. They grow sticky rice out here as they are too high to grow your normal rice, but it tastes great and you have a great excuse to eat with your hands and play with your food . You would think 9 hours on a bus without air con would be really nasty but it was a great journey , spent most of it with my head out of the window saying hello to the locals on the way though, due to the pot holes the size of cars we couldn't go much quicker then 30mph at the most !
It is beginning to sink in where we are , bloody hell it is awesome ! Really getting in to the whole living out of a rucksack and going with the flow eating with the locals , getting by with sign language and being laughed at at our terrible tone and pronunciation of words! One thing nine hours on a bus lets you do is get a thai and laos lesson, ( very similar language! ) Complete tongue work out !
Luang prabang is a UNESCO town , so completely preserved from development. It is an understandably pretty place , very french, very clean and conservative, but we have to say that we prefer the more rural towns though , for character. However on our second day in we went to another waterfall, this time though the waterfall was something out of fiction! Due to mineral contents the water it was a stunning milky blue cascading over many pools with at a huge drop . We hiked up to the source of the drop, a good 200-300 meters up and stood on the top of the waterfall , no joke ! From there we discovered a little secret pool with just a few people in it ( in comparison to the pools below with a fair few people in) We went for a dip ( fully clothed ! boo!) with about 4 other intrepid explorers from our group, the pool was about 10 meters wide and at least 2-3 meters deep in the middle so a bit of cliff jumping was required ! Still cant quite believe that we were swimming in a fresh water fall ! We swam up to the side where it plunges in to the next pool a good 50 + meters down ! Natures own infinity pool ! It was all hot humid jungle around us with bugs the size of baseballs , but it was soo soo amazing. 
We managed to grab a sunset over the mountains from the highest point in the centre of Luang prabang ( no photos though cos we left our charger in Chengdu, doh!, have one now though)Day 18 20/4/2009 Woke up at 5am to go and watch the giving of almes to monks at 5.30am. The monks are as young as 7 years old, and they only live in the food given to them in the morning. in Buddhist countries monks are revered above all else even their royalty ( when they had one). Then we went off to the palace of the old king, with a throne room that never got used because the country turned to communism before he got crowned, gutting huh!
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