Without any Laos money (though they happily take Thai baht and US dollars) our first port of call (after finding some overnight accommodation) was the local bank. We changed a mere $300 US dollars and came away as millionaires with 2.3 million Lao kip! (There are 12,500+ Lao kip to the pound). Laos doesn't have any coins so our wallets were stuffed with notes, the largest of which appears to be 50,000 kip or around 4GBP. The smallest note we've had (and still got as it's hardly worth anything) is 500 kip or around 4p. We are being very careful when we hand over notes for payment as it is very easy to miscount the '0's!
After a night overlooking the Mekong and Thailand we set off on the 2 day slow boat journey down the Mekong towards Luang Prabang (which used to be the capital of Laos when they were a monarchy).
The boat journey was quite interesting and peaceful with lovely scenery. After 6+ hours we made landfall for the night at Pak Beng. This place is about a half-horse town and only there for the boats that overnight on their way between Huay Xai and Luang Prabang. 
Day 2 was longer but we arrived at our destination after around 9 hours and with numb bums! The boat had made numerous other stops during the 2 days to pick up and drop off many locals and supplies because many of the villages we passed had no road access. We also saw a working elephant at the beginning of the second day.
Luang Prabang is a UNESCO World Heritage city and most of it is well preserved. It is certainly the 'prettiest' place we've been in for a long time, but unfortunately it's also one of the most expensive places around. On UK standards its still pretty cheap but we've very quicky got accustomed to south east Asia prices!
We spent a couple of days looking around temples, the National Museum in the former Royal Palace and taking a tuk tuk ride to some waterfalls where we went swimming and saw black Asiatic bears in a rescue centre.
We then got a minivan for 7 hours to a place called Phonsovan. It was supposed to be air conditioned but as the engine overheated going uphill the driver opened his window and so the A/C cut out.
The main (only) attraction in Phonsovan is something called the Plain of Jars. There are many sites around the town where stone jars around 2-3000 years old have been found. The actual age hasn't been determined and neither has the exact use but it is thought they are funeral urns. The urns vary in size from site to site but are anything from 1 - 3 metres high. It's Laos' answer to Stonehenge! There are only a few sites that are open to the public because the whole area is full of unexploded cluster bombs and other types of bombs which were dropped by the Americans during the Vietnam War. Only the sites cleard by the Mines Advisory Group can be visited.
We had an interesting day tour of 4 of the sites and various other places (including a visit to a Buddhist community centre where we were blessed by a monk smoking a cigarette!)From Phonsovan we decided to give Vang Vieng a miss. This is a place where mostly gap year type students go to go tubing (floating in a large inner tube) down a river stopping at every bar en route. The aim appears to be to get as drunk as possible. We decided we were much to old for that so caught the bus direct to Vientiane, the capital of Laos.
In order to save a night in a hotel we opted for the VIP nightbus (the nightbus in Thailand when we went to Bangkok was fine) ...... mistake!
The bus left 30 minutes late at 8.30pm. It was full of locals except for us and 2 other westerners. It wasn't long before the music started and it got louder and louder. Jon asked a couple of times for it to be turned down but was just laughed at. We began to think we'd bought tickets for a mobile all night disco rather than a bus on which to sleep. We stopped at 2am for a meal (noodle soup) that was included in the ticket price and finally reached our destination an hour late at 7am. Having found accommodation we went to bed for a couple of hours!
Today we took a local bus (complete with chickens and tractor tyre) for an hour (25kms), cost 40p each and visited a Buddha Park. What a bizarre place! Some eccentric has placed all sorts of Buddhist and Hindu (and other) sculptures in a field on the edge of the Mekong - we wonder what drugs he was on! Some of the sculptures were labelled as having been donated by a Mr Ear-Kim-Ou and his madam! Still it was something to do and an experience on the bus.
We'll let you know if it was the right decision when we next update the blog.
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