Luang Prabang back to Veng Vieng!

So my cold went away after 4 days of pretty much lying down and only appearing for food. And by then it was two days to Christmas. so I figured I'd just hang around and wait for that to be over with before moving again. I did manage to take some photos though. And by some I mean lots...

Another bamboo bridge.

Front of Vat Visounnarath

Side of Vat Visounnarath

And of course with all the lying down doing nothing I started playing with HDR's and Panoramas some more.

HDR from same spot.

HDR of a sunset

Panorama of a bamboo bridge

This is out the front of the national museum, I don't think it's an actual working temple though, it didn't have a name.

And then back to non HDRs... They were annoying me and I can't get them quite right.

Elephant on the side of faketemple(tm)

Shiny

Shinier

Another non HDR view!

More seven headed naga. Thailand had five headed naga's with very few seven headed in places. Laos only seems to have the seven headed variety. Or seven in one mouth, like above... Does this actually count as eight?

The top view of the markets.

And then it was time for Christmas. Here's a photo of my lunch:

Beer. And two glasses of Lao Lao. Which is 50% alcohol. Which meant the rest of Christmas was spent lying down...

And then finally, on Boxing Day, it was time to leave. My original plans were to head north, but because I had spent so much time being sick I started to head south again as I have a plane to catch to Vietnam on the 3rd of January. And as I'm an expert in panoramas now, here are all of them from yesterday:

I made it to Bor Nam Oom guesthouse which is five bungalows next to some hot springs on the side of the main highway. I'd read about it the day before as I was trying to stay near that awesome mountain. They have small little bungalows next to the hot springs and it's popular for cyclists as it's a days riding from Vang Vieng. I stayed in the one closest to the road but I didn't get much sleep because of the traffic. All through the night there were trucks and often they would pull up and leave the truck idling while the driver went off to swim in the hot springs. I think by 3am the traffic stopped completely but then it started back up at 6am. But it's still a good spot, maybe stay in the bungalows further away from the road though.

This was the view from the front of the tiny bungalow in the morning.

The sun just appearing over the stupid wires.

And the hot springs! Steam coming off it in the morning. On the left side of the road is the restaurant, cheap good food! And beer!

All the locals use the springs as their local baths so there is a stream of people coming to clean themselves, their clothes, and their teeth in this water. I wondered how much of the scum on the bottom of the pool was made up of what other people washed off themselves. It's not too hot though, probably mid twenties, but that's much warmer than the winter morning.

Then for today it was a quick 77km run to Vang Vieng. The cyclists that were staying there were also headed there, but I beat them here because I'm awesome fast! But I did also lie to them about how far away Vang Vieng was, my GPS told me 53km, but then once I got on the road it corrected itself to 77km... Well at least I'm not pedaling 24km more than I thought I was.

Just down the road from the guesthouse I found this view.

More roads

More Mountains, and fields.

Then I turned around and saw this!

And now I'm in Vang Vieng again. Found a place that is half the price of what I paid last time I was here. I'll stay here two nights then stop one more time before getting to Vientiane again for new years eve.

Wat Xieng Thong

Yesterday I went up to Wat Xieng Thong to have a look around. There's a 20000kip admission on most places here so I figured I'd go to the biggest first. It was built in 1560, and has been renovated many times. There's a sign up there now about current renovations financed by the US embassy in Laos.

Panorama view

Normal view.

This was built into the west wall. I don't think there was a matching one on the other side...

The mirrored tiles. These ones are new I guess, the older ones are not so reflective anymore.

On the back of the temple.

A door!

On the smaller builting behind the main temple (don't know what it's called)

The main doorway into the temple.

After that I went to the bakery and got a really good cheese and ham croissant... Then I went back to the guesthouse because of this stupid cold.

The street closer to Wat Xieng Thong

A building.

Then eventually it was time to feed again, and it was conveniently time for sunset.

From where I ate my fried rice last night.

Yesterday when I was looking at google maps for somewhere else to go I found this nice easy straight road west to Hongsa. This would be easy enough to deal with while I have this stupid cold. I found a guesthouse to stay at all, everything looked good, except the directions on the guesthouse never mentioned coming from Luang Prabang via this road, which is odd because looks like the easiest way there. Then I zoomed in to google maps to see if the road was dirt so I could guess how long it would take to get there and found that the road doesn't actually line up properly with the satellite image. So I checked the other map that I bought, and that clearly shows there are no roads in that direction... Lucky I didn't just set off. But after researching this more I find out there is a road under construction, maybe.

But anyway, I'm staying here until this cold goes away.

Luang Prabang

I got here two days ago, but I've been zoned out from the 252km of constant corners. Seven hours of corners. I'm not sure you realise how many corners there are. There are lots. No, more than you're thinking right now. Yes, even more than that.

The road goes through that village, then about 5km along the road you appear above it...

More corners.

I also found out the reason for all the guns after some quick interwebnet research. In the past on highway 7 and 13 there have been attacks on the road from guerilla forces camped out in the mountains. Apparently this died down a few years ago but there are still lots of military on the road and armed guards on most buses through the area. The locals still carry guns too so I guess it still happens but the government may not allow the reporting of it get out.

A bit of the road went missing so they're remaking it. I had to wait here for half an hour.

And then I finally made it to Luang Prabang but I still had to find a place to stay and sunset was getting close. I eventually found a place right by the mekong (after navigating all the stupid one way streets, and the one main road blocked by the markets) for 120000kip/night, expensive, but I was too zoned out to care. And now I'm all unpacked I can't be bothered finding a cheaper place. Laos seems to be quite expensive, but I haven't strayed from the main tourist routes.

The next day I went out wandering with my camera, evidence of this is below...

A bamboo bridge I walked across for 5000kip. Seemed stable enough...

From on the bridge, it sways a bit here.

The confluence (word of the day) of the Mekong and Nam Khan.

The boats on the Mekong

After I found some breakfast (with croissants and baguettes) I headed to Phou Si in the middle of this area where there is a temple on top.

The stairs heading up....

Oh man, 190 more!

Looking down the stairs.

Panorama from the top, looking East with the Nam Khan near the right.

West towards the Mekong

A serpent on top of the temple.

More Nam Khan

Sunset over the Mekong

Now with boats!

I went to the markets that block the main street last night. This is the handicrafts markets so there's not to much food around (but I did manage to find some, and have been near the toilet ever since, not sure if related).

You have to watch for motorbikes in here too...

Lots and lots of stalls, but mostly selling the same things. There are a few with paintings, old coins and other things that I assume are unique to the particular stall, but most other things might be hand made but the all look like they came from the same place. There were also many stores selling the local whiskey with snakes/spiders/scorpions in it too, didn't look appealing. But I did buy some banana cake!

And now I've managed to get a cold.