After thoroughly enjoying our time in Vang Vieng we where looking forward to getting to the UNESCO town of Luang Prabang and enjoying the ancient Laos towns hospitality - but similar to lots of things on our travels it was not going to be so straight forward!
We where picked up at 7am at our hotel and apparently it would take 5 to 7 hours to travel 190 km's because the roads are not so good.
The first hiccup we encountered was when the driver would not leave Vang Vieng as he had not received payment for one of the passengers so we drove all around town looking for the Laos guy who owed him the money after eventually finding him and collecting the money (45 mins later) we found out these two guys are friends! Obviously they trust each other when it comes to money.
After this we hit the road - the roads where bumpy and winding but the views and the weather combined to provide us with some stunning views of the unspoilt Laos countryside which was breath taking.
Our people carrier only had 9 people on it including the driver so everybody slowly started chatting and the was an older English lady an older American gent, a Spanish couple and a English guy called Tom. We where making great progress and couldn't see how the ride would take us 7 hours as we where over half way after 2 hours but our hope of a short trip where short lived. We then found ourselves in a traffic jam on a mountain lane in the countryside - people where already sat beside their vehicles eating and drinking and there where vendors there selling refreshments so it became obvious that these people had been here a while. From our position we could not see the end of the jam so we decided to take a stroll in the sun to find the route of the problem. After about a kilometre we could see the scale of the problem! roughly about 800 metres of road had disappeared down the mountain thanks to a landslide and there was 3 huge JCB's trying to fix the problem and in the distance on the other side of the slide we could see another large queue of vehicles who where trying to go the other way.
So we sat and talked for over 2 hours and I learnt that Tom was suffering from the same illness I had in Cambodia so we instantly had something in common. The driver then came and told us that the road would not be fixed today and our only option was to scale the mountainside and cross the landslide with our bags and switch with one of the other people carriers on the other side.
We sat off up the hill and realised it would not be a simple task as the rains had made the ground very slippery and it was quite steep on the way down the other side - plus there was about 500 people trying to get to where we had just came from. Leanne and I waited for Tom as we knew he wasn't well and after getting down the other side covered in red dirt and out of breath we realised the rest of our group had left without us! (so much for the travellers code).
We eventually got on another vehicle and had another 4 hours to Luang Prabang.
So in total it took us 13 hours to travel a little more than 190 km's!
Once we arrived in Luang Prabang we realised that it was totally worth the effort - the fact that it was a UNESCO city was visible in the quality of the preservation of buildings and the atmosphere that filled the streets.
We stayed in a very nice little guesthouse opposite the river and just enjoyed all that the town/city had to offer and Leanne found a nice book exchange and moved onto her millionth book of the trip.
We booked our bus to Kunming in China and found out it would take us 30 hours so we where really looking forward to that!
It was not all plain sailing in Luang Prabang as we exchanged some money for Chinese Yuan (or RMB) and because we where not familiar with the notes the lady managed to short change us by about 80 RMB - but we're sure Karma will pay her a visit.
We enjoyed the town and sunshine before heading to our next destination and country Kunming and China!
To see our pictures from Luang Prabang please click on the link below;
https://picasaweb.google.com/112941139607408893724/LuangPrabangLaos22ndTo24thAugust2011#
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